Freedom, Martyrdom and the Church

One of the early pamphlets produced by the Faith Movement was on religious freedom. It was the early 1970s and it chiefly focused on the plight of Christians in the USSR and Communist-dominated Eastern Europe.

Thanks to the excellent work of the then recently-established Keston College and the heroism of dissidents in the USSR and of Catholics in Poland, Lithuania, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, much material about the persecution of Christians under Communism reached the West. We learned about prisoners in the Gulag, the horror of incarceration in mental “hospitals” in the USSR, and about the excellent underground newsletters such as the Chronicle of the Lithuanian Catholic Church.

Back then

Although in those days we sometimes spoke and wrote about the need to affirm our right to full religious freedom here in Britain, it was not a right that was seriously challenged. Announcing that children should be taught about marriage as the union of one man and one woman for life might have seemed rather forthright – with divorce and remarriage common, and unmarried cohabitation increasingly normal – but no one imagined losing their job or being publicly denounced for such an announcement. We wrote freely about Christian moral and social teachings, and Christian campaigners on such issues battled in open debate with their opponents when given the opportunity on TV or radio.

And now

It is superfluous to note how different things are now, which is why we make no apology for returning to the topic of religious freedom. We note that we have a certain confidence in quoting the Church in defence of such freedom, as the Second Vatican Council – ahead of its time, but mindful of the grim totalitarianism that had stained Europe in the first half of the 20th century – had tackled the issue and given us equipment with which to work.

True freedom also requires a sharing of knowledge, not just opinions. There is real concern about the quality of education in Britain’s schools. How is history being taught? Is it just a matter of children being urged to affirm current political opinions on various issues, or are the events, and attitudes of the past presented and explored? Is it just a matter    of looking at the 19th and 20th centuries, or is attention paid to, for example, the Roman Empire, the Saxons, the early Middle Ages? What about literature? Are they reading some of the great classics? Are they expected to read everything though a “feminist” lens? And how is Christianity treated?

Schools

Catholics in Britain can be proud of the traditions of their schools. But there is now strong pressure from officialdom to adopt coercive forms of sex education and linked material that is damaging to children and contrary to Christian understanding of human dignity. There is also a grave shortage of Catholic teachers: and this in turn is partly due to the huge pressures faced by young men or women entering a classroom today. Broken family bonds make for frustrated, angry, unhappy boys and girls. It is not easy to teach a group among which are several going through the agony of a parental breakup, or where the complications of “Mum’s new boyfriend” or “Dad’s ex-partner” intrude into everyday life and attempts to concentrate on schoolwork. Today’s prospective teachers face challenges not faced by those of the past – including the fairly recent past and they know it.