Than To Receive

In the course of the weekend's non-story about condoms and the Pope, the BBC displayed its characteristic objectivity by having on Lavinia Byrne, to whom the matter does seem rather academic. Dr Byrne has lived for many years, since long before she formally left the Religious Life, with a former Catholic RE teacher who is now an Anglican cleric. A lady, one need hardly add.

Anyway, Dr Byrne used the opportunity to trot out that old favourite, "reception", which the ageing, declining band of liberal Catholics uses to mean "when we happen to agree with something". Their theory has nothing whatever to do with that of Blessed John Henry Newman, and even his has no Magisterial authority, although, unlike his theory of the development of doctrine, it was at least conceived while he was a Catholic.

No, they hold a concept of "reception" which, like the notion that provinces of the Anglican Communion are autonomous, was invented in the 1970s by proponents of the unilateral ordination of women among American Episcopalians. In which vein, it is worth pondering today's opening of a new General Synod of the Church of England. Had this Synod been in place 20 years ago, then it would not have passed the women priests legislation. Some "reception".

Much like what Dr Byrne insists is the non-reception of the teaching on condoms. How can that non-reception be the case, if in fact people (in Africa, if it matters) are refraining from using condoms and other artificial contraceptives in accordance with the Teaching of the Church? Even in the West, the simple, inevitable outbreeding of the dissidents by the orthodox is now a readily observable pastoral reality. That is reception, as articulated by the only person in a position to do so, the Holy Father.