Week off

I'm on holiday this week. I've been in Hull (as well as a short trip to Middlesbrough) since Friday night and am returning to Kettering tonight in preparation for a couple of days in London to finish off the week.

On Monday I went up to Middlesbrough to see my friend Phil, who is working in the Boro at the moment, as well as a few other people. I stayed with Father John Paul Leonard overnight. There was much talk of the new bishop, Terence Drainey, and his preparations prior to being installed as bishop at Middlesbrough Cathedral on 25 January.

He met with all those priests and deacons (about 70 in all) who could make it up to Middlesbrough last Monday (19 November). Many of them have reported a sense of an impending "fresh start" after the meeting. I've just heard today that he's planning a trip to say Mass at St Charles in Hull a few days after his episcopal ordination. In February he will embark on a trip of the diocese he is now bishop of.

On the way back to Hull on Tuesday, I drove through the beautiful North Yorkshire Moors, stopping off at some of my favourite places. The first stop was Egton Bridge, the heart of Catholic Yorkshire. It was home of Blessed Nicholas Postgate, on of the 85 martyrs who was hanged drawn and quartered at the age of 82 for being a Catholic priests. He roamed the moors posing as a gardener, but, in reality, he said Mass, administered the sacraments and was responsible for many conversions.

I said a quick prayer in the church of St Hedda's and squinted (because the light to the cabinet was off) at the relics of Father Postgate, which include a tabernacle door recovered from his Mass house.

A seven-mile drive across the misty moors near to the Esk Valley brought me to the famous village of Goathland, or, to give it its more popular fictional name, Aidensfield. Yes, it's the set of popular ITV 60s police drama "Heartbeat". And although much of the filming is now done in studio, scenes are still often shot in the village, apparently as recent as a few days ago.

How could I resist lunch in the Aidensfield Arms (known as the Goathland Arms in the 21st century)? I had an open roast beef sandwich with salad and a glass of lemonade. After a quick visit to the other attractions:

Script's Garage

and the row of shops...

I made my way down the coast road back down to Hull.

Today, after Mass at St Charles and lunch with Canon Michael Loughlin, I visited the home of William Wilberforce, the mastermind behind the abolition of the slave trade.

He was born in the house and lived in it at points throughout his life. As MP of Hull and Yorkshire, it was his constituency home. Although Wilberforce was a Methodist, his son Henry William Wilberforce became a Catholic in 1850 and was a journalist, including jobs as a proprietor and editor of the "Catholic Standard", afterwards known as the "Weekly Register", from 1854 to 1863. Some of his other sons also became Catholics.

Most of the Wilberforce family now is Catholic, including Fr Gerard Wilberforce, William's great great grandson. He is a priest in Exeter whom I interviewed earlier this year.

Cambridge Faith Forum: Fr Stephen Dingley

I managed to make it to two of the Cambridge Faith Forum talks which took place last month. The first was by Fr Stephen Dingley. Below is my summary of his talk "Anybody out there? Faith, science and the existence of God":

He made some opening remarks about why he thought the existence of God was important. He said the first reason was because "it's not obvious". We cannot take God for granted, particularly in our modern society. It is a topical question - an issue people are talking about. It's also the basis/centre of our life, therefore we need to make sure we know why we live the way we do. It's also counter-cultural - the prevailing culture in the media is an atheistic/secular culture. And was Christians we've got to be able to answer that with clear answers. Knowing why we believe in God is at the centre of any work of evangelisation and catechises.

If we try and invite people from our prevailing society to believe in God we've got to give them sound reasons - otherwise they're going to build whatever response they have on pure emotion. The emotion might drain away when they wake up one morning - what's left? If our religion is based on emotion and feeling - what do you do when something difficult happens in your life? What happens when your feelings disappear? The question is: Are we believing in fairies at the bottom of the garden? If we are, that's stupid.

It's also important because it's the teaching of the Bible - that we can know God from looking at the world. If we look at the world God made we ought to be able to see signs that it was made by God. If we look at the world we ought to be able to see the style of the creator written through it.

It's also the dogma of the Catholic Church as taught by Vatican I. We are heretics if we say we cannot know God from looking at the world.

When talking about the existence of God, we're talking about truth, not in a mathematical sense, but in reality "out there". God is an external reality and, therefore, what we're looking for is evidence. It's about looking at the evidence and making an intelligent, responsible decision. That is what proof is about. Even if you do a mathematical soon you have to ask - have I done it right? Have I not made a mistake? That is the sort of way human reason works.

Fr Stephen admitted that Richard Dawkins was a good scientist and an "amazing communicator". But he added that "sadly, what he's ventured into recently is not his subject" and said theology and philosophy were not his strong points. "What he presents there is frankly shoddy."

He presented a couple of introductions to the way Dawkins argues to show the shallowness of his argument.

It's a rather peculiar thing to claim that you are God. Jesus did this because the bible reports it. Either he is like most human beings who claim to be God (a nutter) or he's a liar, or he's right. Dawkins argues that there's no real evidence that Jesus claimed to be God in the first place to which the answer the whole thing about Christianity for 2000 years is a surprising thing if Jesus didn't claim to be God.

His second comment - is that Jesus might have been innocently mistaken - which is to miss the whole point of the argument. You cannot be innocently mistaken about whether you're God and be in full pocession of your faculties. Either Richard Dawkins hasn't understood the argument and is stupid or he has understand the argument and is trying to con us. Fr Stephen went on to give more examples of how Dawkins fails to engage the facts.

He then went onto present Aquinas' three arguments for the existence of God. Nothing happens by itself, it has to be caused by something else. How far can you go back? You cannot go back and back forever because that never really explains the whole process. No matter how far back you go you have to have something different to explain why all of those people existed in the first place. You need a first cause, something which doesn't need to be brought into existence from something else. This we call God. There's got to be something that gives existence but doesn't receive existence from anything else. This we call God.

But Dawkins asks why should God be immune from saying who made God? He's missed the point of the argument. We don't conjure up a first cause - we work out logically - there must have been a first cause. Who caused the uncaused being? This is also a stupid question from Dawkins.

God creates the laws of science which then work to bring about complex life. It's not either God or the laws of science - it's both. The argument that the laws of science will come up with an argument to the why the universe is so fine tuned - which is a pure act of faith in science.

Physics is the study of the most basic level of how the law works. If there's something specific about the laws of physics, what can explain that? The answer is: Nothing inside the universe.

The things that we see in the world need causes. That's the basis of our everyday life. You've got to fall into madness to reject the idea that things have causes. If you stay sane, you've got to agree with it. That's also the basis of science. It's about codifying, recognising and discovering the reasons why things happen.

The key observation for us is that about 100 years ago the science of cosmology was introduced. Instead of just having science studying things in the universe, we can actually see that the universe obeys the laws of science as a whole. This is Einstein's theory of relativity. We are endeavouring to explain why things happen for a particular reason. If the universe is caused, it must be caused by something outside, something other than the universe.

Dawkins agrees with us that there must be a first cause of the universe, although he says God must have set in motion something small. Which shows he his lying when he rubbished some of Aquinas' theories.

This is an argument that science can make the universe therefore the universe needs an explanation that isn't the universe, therefore there's something that's like God.

We now need to investigate whether we can properly call in God. Is it something that can be personal, it's got to be someone that we can relate to, someone who loves us and can communicate with.

We can link up all of our fundamental knowledge about the world into two laws - Einstein's law of general relativity and quantum mechanics. Currently, physics is trying to link those two up. At some point, scientists will come up with a grand unified theory. It's the way the world works.

Why is the universe a coherence? This tells us more about the cause of the universe. It means that the first cause must be "one" a not "many" and there's a certain understanding about it to create the universe.

Time and space came out of the big bang. Since then the operation of the law of physics develops in incredible intricacy and in mutual relationship. From the the operations of the law of science you get from huge simplicity to extraordinary complexity through an extraordinary web of interactions. This needs to explained. It tells us, about the first cause, that the universe must have been chosen and designed because there's no reason for the universe to exist in this particular way. In some way there's a supreme mind and wisdom governing the universe and in some way it wants this universe for the sake of its richness, its end product which is intelligent life. It is supreme mind and will that wants and loves us and wants to bring us into existence. It is therefore in some sense personal. This does answer to a basic definition of what people call God. It makes sense looking at the evidence to conclude God exists which isn't just an appeal to feeling or some religious authority. It's an appeal to sanity.

Fr Stephen ended the talk by giving the analogy of a garden - which is well ordered and beautiful for a purpose. "And if that's true there's a gardener. And the Gardner of the universe is surely what we call God."

Prayers for Lord Daniel Brennan

In dramatic scenes in the House of Lords tonight, Lord Daniel Brennan, president of the Catholic Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, collapsed shortly after making his contribution to the 2nd Reading of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. As the wife of Ian Paisley, Baroness Paisley, got midway through her strong speech against the bill, peers all around her suddenly rushed towards Lord Brennan, who could be heard struggling to catch his breath. The house was promptly adjourned. It is thought he suffered a heart attack. Lord Darzi, the top surgeon appointed a Health Minister by Gordon Brown, who actually opened the debate for the government, is being hailed as a hero by peers after dramatically reviving the Labour peer by administering heart massage until first aid staff arrived in the Lords chamber.

Lord Brennan looked off colour whilst making his speech, in which called for the setting up of a national bioethics commission in the UK. He was taken across the Thames to St Thomas' Hospital, where he is said to be "on the mend.

Please keep him in your prayers.

More of my obsevations on the 2nd reading to follow.

Abortion Act Anniversary - Julia Millington

Tonight, I'm able to give you another of the speeches made at the pro-life rally on October 27, 40th Anniversary of the Abortion Act.

Following Jim Dobbin MP, a powerful speech was made by Julia Millington of the Pro-Life Alliance. I'll try to summarise the main points from her speech.

"Today we're commemorating in the UK a truly unworthy aspect of our past, which unlike the tragedies mentioned [e.g slavery] is still with us.

"Over 6.7 million unborn babies have been aborted, 6.7 million, unknown, unnamed, innocents. This is more than the combined populations, MORE than the combined populations of Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Carlisle, Chester, Derby, Durham, Edinburgh, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northampton, Nottingham, Oxford, Sheffield and Swansea."

"We heard some months ago about an abortion performed on a 14-year-old girl in London and there were complications as a result of the abortion and she ended up in a major London hospital where the phonograph found foetal remains were still in her womb and it was necessary to perform a hysterectomy."

"Most pregnancies are terminated with minimum if any deference to the law and eugenic abortion is available up to birth.

"There can be no joy in our hearts whatsoever as we commemorate this anniversary. Only an overwhelming sense of sadness and immeasurable loss. It would be impossible to quantify the value in human terms of the millions who have been denied the chance to live.

"For some people in this country there is no such thing as too many abortions. They continue to argue that there are not enough - either in this country or the developing world."

She went onto talk about the Marie Stopes conference, held in the week before the rally, which was to "celebrate the abortion act, with the participation of Amnesty International, Catholics for a Free Choice and International Planned Parenthood Federation".

"On the platform were the inevitable UK pro-abortion noticables, agitating for an even more liberal provision of abortion. And Sir David Steel, grandly described as the architect of the Abortion Act had a prime position at the conference.

"Now is absolutely the right time to turn back the tide of abortion. In the heart of the nation there is an understanding that abortion was never meant to be an unrestrained right and never should be."

She went on to say: "We want to see abortion confined to history forever. Nobody but an absolute extremist can see abortion as a good thing and we must solve the problems that lead women to contemplate such a tragic end to a pregnancy and find real solutions long before they reach the abortion clinic.

"We believe that women, their unborn babies their families, and society itself deserve much better than abortion."

Rome: Meeting with Mgr Ignacio Barreiro

On the Thursday of the trip to Rome a couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of going to Vita Umana Internazionale, Piazzale Gregorio VII, to see Mgr Ignacio Barreiro, who heads the Rome office of Human Life International. Although I had the address of the office, it took me ages to find it. As my Italian is virtually non-existant, I was a bit hesitant in ringing the intercom. When I did a young woman answered and, luckily, she just about understood the Yorkshire accent. I mentioned I was involved with SPUC in the UK and was shown in.

I was asked to climb the stairs and was greeted at the top of them by the receptionist. She promptly showed me into Mgr's office, where I was greeted with a warm handshake. Mgr was expecting me at some point during that week, as he had been warned in advance that someone of my name was roaming the streets of the Eternal City. Amidst the strong scent of cigarette smoke and surrounded by piles of books on bioethics, not to mention the backdrop of several photos of Mgr meeting both Pope Benedict and John Paul II, we had a good meeting of about 45 minutes in length.

Mgr was keen to mention to me the slightly less well known attractions of Rome, including the location of the only ever English pope, Adrian IV, in the tombs of the popes under St Peter's (which we managed to spot and pray from a distance at the security rope the day after).

After the Rome tips, I managed to get Mgr onto the subject of his work. From then on, he dominated our meeting, with some fascinating examples of HLI's Rome work in action. He explained that they have a three elements to their operations. The first is to attempt to fastrack correspondence between the various pro-life organisations and the Vatican, as well as "lobbying" the Vatican on behalf of pro-life groups world-wide; secondly to provide a library on bioethical, life and family related issues for seminarians of various nationalities; and thirdly to undertake some pro-life campaigning (demos, political lobbying) in Italy.

After managing to get a word in about briefly who I was, we exchanged contact details and he gave me a quick tour of the office before the arrival of a Spanish seminarian. But before I left, Mgr very kindly gave me a splendid but weighty gift - a copy of the Lexicon published by the Pontifical Council for the Family. It is a 946-page compendium of articles regarding "ambiguous and debatable terms regarding family life and ethical questions". I hope to delve into one of the chapters tonight before hitting the sack.

I thanked him very much for the gift (a book which he helped to translate into English), said farewell and then stepped back out into a dripping wet Roman early evening.

More Rome pictures

View of the coliseum from the top of the Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele.

View of Rome from top of Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele.

Me shortly after the Wednesday audience.

Rome Pictures

I've finally managed to borrow a same-sized camera lead after failing to find my own. I'm now able to give you a quick blast of Rome photos from a couple of weeks ago:

This is a rather wierd looking me with my mum and dad who were out in Rome on pilgrimage the same time as us.

Here's a beautiful one of St Peter's at dusk.

This is a fantastically dressed Swiss Guard just before the start of the General Audience.

Here's Pope Benedict greeting crowds in the distance.

This is the closest picture I got of the Pope but, unfortunately, somebody annoyingly put their arm in the way.

40th Anniversary Rally

Still can't find the lead to my camera, but hopefully it will turn up in the next day or two.

Before continuing the Rome tales, I feel I should give you my report on the 40th Anniversary of the Abortion Act commemorations.

Last Saturday, we landed at Heathrow at approximately 9.45am BST. Ryan made is way to King's Cross to get back to Cambridge whilst I headed to Westminster. I arrived at Old Palace Yard across the road from the Houses of Parliament at about 11:30am. By then, the Silent No More witness had finished and SPUC supporters were standing on the roadside with "Women deserve better than abortion" placards. As I've outlined before, Silent No More is an campaign which orginated in the US but has now emerged in the UK. It attempts to make the public aware of the devastation abortion brings to women and men. The campaign seeks to expose and heal the secrecy and silence surrounding the emotional and physical pain of abortion. Witnesses involved women and men who have had abortion experiences bravely giving their testimonies and giving their reasons why abortion has caused them trauma, both physically and mentally, even years after an abortion.

After helping with refreshments for participants and supporters, it was time to head back to Old Palace Yard for the "Time for Change" rally. Around 2000 people converged on Westminster to commemorate the passing of that pernicious piece of legislation 40 years to the day on Saturday - and to call for a change of hearts and minds on the issue.

The event was extremely moving, from the testimonies given by women who have had and regretted abortions to the moving speech of a girl whose mother seriously considered having her aborted.

The rally was started by Jim Dobbin, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Pro-Life Group. He took people back to the situation at the time of the bill's passage:

"At the time, we were told a number of scandalous lies about the number of backstreet abortions. They quoted figures from 30,000 backstreet abortions each year to 250,000. Although the council of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists challenged the claims and told parliamentarians that even the claim of the 30,000 figure was absolutely ludicrous. The number of women being admitted to hospital subsequently was so low that it meant that having a backstreet abortion was safer than an abortion in the best possible conditions."

Mr Dobbin went onto to note that both the British Medical Association and the RCOG were both opposed to the draft bill. But, as we know, that fully support abortion now.

"The leaders of all the three main parties supported the abortion lobby," Mr Dobbin added. "There were no surprises that gradually and pro-abortion ethos took over in parliament and in 1990 abortion was legalised up to birth for disabled unborn children."

Mr Dobbin went on to list reasons why he thinks attitudes towards the issue are changing. When commending an increasing amount of doctors who, were are told, are refusing to carry out abortions, spontaneous applause broke out amongst those gathered. He also mentioned Professor Stuart Campbell's incredible 3D pictures of unborn babies in the womb.

"We know that from the very moment of conception, the embryo is alive by the very fact that it can die or be killed and that it is growing and developing."

As most of those at the rally were Christian from many denominations, the Labour MP quoted that beautiful moment from scripture, of the living Christ present in the womb of Our Lady - the visitation of Mary to Elizabeth. St Elizabeth, carrying John the Baptist, recalled: "At the sound of Mary's voice, the babe in my womb lept for joy." At this time, Christ would have been an embryo of about 14 days.

Mr Dobbin warned about the dangers of the pro-abortion lobby's push for a greater liberalisation of the law - "as if six million abortions were not enough". "Today we are having to fight harder than we have ever fought before. We have to reach out to many more people to increase our numbers and we have to make it clear that, no matter what happens, we will not be going away until we have seen victory for the unborn infant and its mother. This battle must be across the nation as well as inside the House of Commons. Abortion is wrong and the law needs to change." The MP's final comments were met with a rousing round of applause.

I intend to go through my recordings of the other speeches made at the rally and blog about them. Mr Dobbin's rousing speech gives you a first taste of the rally. I also want to explain in due course why I think Mr Dobbin, the Cardinal and others' calls for "time limit" amendments in the Human Tissue and Embryos Bill are, whilst well intended, potentially going to make the situation worse.

But I would like to finish off this post be giving my brief reflections on the rally. It was amazing to see so many young people and young families marching together with those of all ages down Victoria Street, which came to a standstill on that Saturday afternoon. As we got into the piazza in front of Westminster Cathedral, some of the youngsters started chanting - "What do we want? - An end to abortion - When do we want it - now!"

It was also very moving to finally here the six-and-a-half million lives lost to abortion being remembered and their souls prayed for. The 4pm Westminster Cathedral service was called "A United Christian Service of Remembrance and Healing and Hope". The impression I got was that we were genuinely mourning the loss of more than 500 lives a day since 1967, almost like how we remember our war dead on Remembrance Sunday, for instance.

Think about it. How often to you here bidding prayers at Mass for the souls of the innocents killed by abortion? How many masses are offered for these lives? It's no good having one service every 10 years praying for victims of abortion and the end of the practice. It needs to happen day in day out in our churches and families.

The service was also truly the most effective ecumenism in action I have ever witnessed. Not some wishy washy service about how lovely we are because we all believe in God, or "let's gather round the table" or "Jesus loves you". The people at the service of many denominations felt passionately about the sanctity of life, saving babies and about confining abortion to history. It was a show of public solidarity, and it was great to see the Cardinal and the chaplains of Westminster Cathedral joined by the Anglican Bishop of Fulham and the Archdeacon of Berkshire. How more effective can you get in uniting all Christians in the fight against secular Britain?