One of the greatest successes of Catholic edu- cation in this country has been to turn out Catholic parents, like those gathered in the school hall, who know how to question and who are not content simply to be told what to do when they judge it misguided. My mother would no sooner have publicly


contradicted our local bishop about his hand - ling of my Catholic school than she would have missed going to confession regularly. But the Catholic demographic has changed; old ethnically Irish habits of deference to priests have been replaced by a more European Catholic mentality where clerics are viewed with suspicion. Yet our bishops – for the most part the products of an old-style seminary education that started in teenage years and nurtured in them a sense of being placed on a pedestal – struggle to deal with an articulate laity. If they intend to carry on handing down decisions from on high, then they need to be willing to seek ways that make the claim of seeking a three-way partnership over the edu- cation of children between parents, school and parish into a reality.


children’s best interests” is, I’m afraid, a hard sell indeed for the bishops when Catholic church leaders have been exposed as having abused the trust placed in them by the laity to cover-up the activities of paedophile priests. In such cases, what dioceses saw as their best interest – protecting the good name of the institutional Church – was the very opposite of what parents would have done. Their first instinct is to protect their children. The long-term consequences of the abuse


B


scandal within our Church have yet to be fully grasped by our leaders. They seem to think that, now they have put first-rate and rigorous child-protection measures in place, their leader ship role is once more secure. Yet the rebuilding of trust requires time, humility and a good deal more engaging, listening and working tirelessly to achieve a consensus. Surely, children’s Catholic education is one of the areas where a childless hierarchy has to concede that the laity, who struggle day- to-day with the business of bringing up their offspring in the faith, does actually have some- thing valuable to say. So, please listen to us, explain clearly and openly why you are doing what you are doing, and learn to see that trust as reciprocal. When you hear accounts of the depth of unhappiness, such as that on display on Monday evening, then carefully consider how constructively to move forward, including the sort of compromises that will rebuild partnership. That is what leadership is about. When Cardinal Basil Hume, 20 years ago, faced a similar dispute with Vaughan parents, he was wise enough, when it was clear that he hadn’t won the argument, to think again. He later made a public apology. That is one reason why Catholics trusted him.


■Peter Stanford is a Tablet columnist.


ut there is another aspect to this breakdown in trust. It was the ele- phant in the room on Monday evening. “Trust us to look after your


CATHERINE PEPINSTER


‘Return the Murdoch money and find other ways of replenishing the church coffers’


It was just a few moments after the Mass celebrated by Pope Benedict at Westminster Cathedral ended on Saturday 18 September last year that Tony Gallagher, editor of The Daily Telegraph, turned to me and said: “Did you see who was in the pew behind us? James Murdoch.” Only a gimlet-eyed journalist would have noticed the understated young Murdoch; the chief executive of News Corp, Europe and Asia, and younger son of Rupert has a touch of Harry Potter about him with his owlish glasses, and there was no grand entrance when he came and went at the papal Mass, as there was with the Blairs and Princess Michael of Kent. But what was he doing there? The Murdochs, always keen to


cultivate powerful politicians – Murdoch pater has a history of private meetings with them – have also long cultivated the Catholic Church. The second Mrs Rupert Murdoch, James’ mother, was a Catholic; the media magnate himself has donated to Catholic causes. Indeed, so generous was his donation to Los Angeles Cathedral – $10 million – that in 1998 he was given a papal knighthood. In fact, Murdoch largesse played its part last September too, for a substantial donation was made by the family to the appeal for funding the papal visit. Unlike most of the congregation at the papal Mass, James Murdoch did not have to crane his neck to get his only sight of the Pope. He met him personally just before the Mass; the photographs taken by the Vatican photographer show him bowing low over the outstretched hand of Benedict XVI. Mr Murdoch was one of a large group of benefactors who got to meet the Pope, one by one, that Saturday morning. What they had in common were generous gifts to the papal fund of at least £100,000 each. Enjoying a few private moments with the Holy Father in return for a donation does have a touch of “cash for access” about it, made plainer by the fact that when one of the party leaders who were also meeting the Pope before the Saturday Mass, asked to bring along a devout Catholic constituent to meet Benedict, the


response was that this was inappropriate. The rich man’s gesture, it seems, is preferred to the widow’s mite. But the Church may well say that it has to be pragmatic: Catholics in Britain undoubtedly benefited from the generosity of contributors to the papal visit. It’s obvious that the bishops have some notion of what would constitute a right and proper donation: they undoubtedly would not take profits from abortion. The Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales is understood to consider that directors of companies listed on a stock exchange are acceptable for they are operating within a regulatory framework. We also know a great deal more now about what has been going on inside the Murdoch media empire than anybody did back in September 2010. Archbishop Nichols and his fellow hierarchs may also say that what they knew was that in 2009 Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner John Yates had reviewed the force’s investigation into allegations of the phone hacking by the News of the World, and decided there was not a case to answer. Yet before the papal visit last year, it was known, thanks to former Murdoch employees, that phone hacking and other illegal reporting techniques were rife at the paper, and that senior staff knew what was going on. And already, by the time of the papal visit, the Commons home affairs committee had announced an inquiry, as had the standards and privileges committee, and MPs had held an emergency debate on phone hacking by newspapers. Today revelations are coming thick and fast, but one stands out above all others: the culture of the News of the Worldmade it acceptable to hack the phone of a missing child and delete her voicemail messages, thereby giving the parents of that young girl, Milly Dowler, hope that she was still alive and was still using her phone. Do Catholics really want their


memories of one of the greatest occasions in their national Church’s history to be sullied by links to the corrupt and the cruel? A welcome gesture now would be to return the Murdoch money and find other ways of replenishing the church coffers. The Catholic bishops said this week that they accepted the Murdoch donation in good faith. In future it needs to monitor with the utmost vigilance companies and individuals offering gifts and donations. It cannot rely on optimism about human nature alone.


16 July 2011 | THE TABLET | 11


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