THE
P RTAL
December 2018
Page 9
Catholic Social Teaching
Remembrancetide
Fr Ashley Beck has three points to make
I am writing
this column towards the end of November. Traditionally for Catholics November is the
Month of the Holy Souls, when we make a special effort to offer prayers and Masses for the souls of our loved
ones in purgatory. For those of us who come from an Anglican background, we are aware that this practice
of explicitly praying for the dead has been controversial and at times costly. As it happens, church historians
take the view that the vast numbers of people killed in the First World War, which ended a century ago, did a
certain amount to ‘tone down’ Protestant objections to praying for those who have died (sometimes, however,
this is overstated); and of course it was by chance that the war ended on Martinmas in the month of November.
The observances had a particular poignancy this
year because of the centenary of the armistice; from
the Christian point of view many were very moving,
particularly those which stressed reconciliation and
international co-operation in these difficult times.
However, it is surely the case that Catholics in particular
should not be afraid to distance ourselves from some
aspects of the way in which Remembrance Sunday
is observed, in line with our teaching: this might be
particularly hard for those of us from an Anglican
background because of the Church of England’s place
as the established religion of England. Old habits
might die hard.
The first thing to stress is that remembering those
who have died in war is for us primarily about praying
for their souls. The specific act of worship allowed in
the Catholic Church in this country is one Requiem
Mass for the war dead. We believe that we help those
we are praying for in their purification after death,
by our intercessions and Masses. It is a definite and
specific act. Purely secular or Protestant remembering
can so easily simply be a passive act, or simply ‘not
forgetting.’ I think that sometimes because we want to
‘own’ remembrance we allow it to be watered down,
to fall short of what it is meant to be in traditional
Christianity. In all the Church’s liturgy surrounding
funerals and those who have died, there are far more
prayers for the dead than anything else: it is more
important than praying for the mourners.
Secondly, the engagement by Catholics in
Remembrance Sunday observances needs to show
awareness of how Catholic teaching about war
and peace has developed and changed in the last
century, partly as a result of the Great War itself. The
disproportionate extent of the slaughter was what
prompted the most neglected and marginalised pope
of the last century, Benedict XV, to oppose the war
resolutely from start to finish, to work untiringly
for it to end by negotiation (unsuccessfully) and to
deny the claims of both sides that the war was just.
Because of that, and the teachings of St John XXIII
and his successors and the Second Vatican Council,
the Church is much more clearly opposed to war,
denouncing it as evil and sinful. Is this message from
us really compatible with gun salutes and marching?
What we teach means that we will be sympathetic to
the wearing of white poppies promoted by the Peace
Pledge Union.
Finally, we need to be wary of observances which
glorify the power of the State. We should remember
what St Augustine of Hippo, back in the early fifth
century, taught in his monumental work The City of
God. For him, the State (in his case the Roman Empire)
is the ‘Earthly City’, civitas terrena, characterised by
violence and the wish to dominate; its worship is false.
It is false because people do not worship the true God;
when this happens the focus for what people are doing
moves away from God towards human beings, either the
leaders of the State or the dead. Much of Remembrance
Sunday seems to be like a secular funeral: Christianity
becomes an embarrassment. Moreover, the careless use
of the idea of sacrifice, applied to those who are being
remembered with often scant regard for history, tends
to supplant the unique sacrifice of Our Lord on the
Cross, into which we enter when we join in the Mass.
The most powerful and grotesque symbol of how the
State supplants Christianity is surely the crosses we see
at war memorials with swords imposed on them.
In my experience in pastoral ministry in both the
Church of England and the Catholic Church, raising
any questions of this kind arouses controversy and
sometimes great anger. But as Catholics in particular we
have a responsibility to witness to the truth – and we
also owe that to those who have been killed in war.