Quest

John Ashman

Of Gods and Men (2010, in Arabic and French with English subtitles)

On the night of 26-27 March 1996, seven Trappist monks from the monastery at Tibhirine in Algeria were kidnapped by Islamist militants during the Algerian Civil War. Two months later, on 23 May, their kidnappers reported in a communiqué that the monks had been killed on 21 May. On 31 May the Algerian government announced that the monks’ heads had been discovered but their bodies were never found. Ever since, controversy has raged about the kidnappings and killings. The Armed Islamic Group (GIA) claimed responsibility for both, but the then French Military Attaché reported that the monks had been accidentally killed by an Algerian army helicopter during an attack on a guerrilla position, then beheaded after their death to make it appear as though the GIA had killed them. It has also been claimed by conspiracy theorists that the GIA cell responsible had been infiltrated by the Algerian secret service.

Whatever the truth behind this appalling tragedy, what lies at the heart of this film is the rhythm and witness of this contemplative community in an Islamic country, 34 years after independence from France, in the increasingly tense final months before the murders. The names of the monks are real and, while the screenplay draws on documents, including the journal of the prior, Christian de Chergé, the characterisations of necessity are fictional.

Having spent a few weeks ten years ago living with a community of Trappist monks, I can say that the film captures with astonishing accuracy the austerity of their way of life. At times I felt that I was watching a documentary. Overall there was a serenity permeating this film arising from the community’s prayer life and its closeness to the villagers among whom they live and for whom they provide an outpatients’ clinic. And yet, paradoxically, this serenity is mixed with an underlying tension; we, the audience, know how this is going to end. Read more…

Quest Bulletin reported in the Spring 2011 issue that the coalition Government at Westminster had launched a consultation on civil partnerships on religious premises. In effect, following the introduction of the Equality Act 2010, the Government seeks to remove the ban on civil partnerships being held on religious premises. The consultation document issued in March 2011 made it clear that faith groups would be given the freedom to act as they wish in relation to registering civil partnerships on their premises and thus enable religious same-sex couples to formalise their relationship in a place of worship.

The then Chair, Peter Rodgers, asked Guy Torrance to draft a response on behalf of Quest. The summary of our response stated that the scope of the consultation and its proposals were too narrow in that faith groups might be protected from legal challenge in choosing not to allow their buildings to be used for civil partnerships but that government might itself be open to such challenge. The Quest response made clear its concern that Government may be seen to be legitimising discrimination by faith groups whilst those groups are fulfilling state functions (whether as to premises or persons). Currently the Catholic Church fulfils a state function when it registers marriages in its churches. Read more…

A new Quest Bulletin has been sent to print and will arrive to the members postboxes in next couple of weeks. – 28 pages of great read! Meanwhile, the digital colour version is already available for download (password-protected; Quest members can request the password from website@questgaycatholic.org.uk).

Kevin T. Kelly

Todd A. Salzman & Michael G. Lawler, The Sexual Person: Toward a Renewed Catholic Anthropology. Georgetown University Press, 2008.

Salzman and Lawler are two lay and married moral theologians in the US. They have made a name for themselves as challenging thinkers, especially in the field of sexual ethics. In The Sexual Person they offer a thorough overhaul of sexual ethics in the light of the person-centred theological vision undergirding Vatican II. I suspect that very many of my fellow moral theologians will accept, as I do, much of what is found in this book, both at a general theoretical level and in their teasing out the implications for everyday life.

They take their starting point from Vatican II’s emphasis on the nature of the human person, as found in the Pastoral Constitution, Gaudium et Spes (GS). GS’s opening chapter is entitled, “The Dignity of the Human Person”. That is a kind of banner headline for its approach to morality, including issues in the field of sexual and marital ethics. A few bishops at Vatican II argued that sexual acts as such had their own specific nature over and above the nature of the human person. This was not accepted and n.51 of GS was worded very precisely to bring out this point. (cf. my New Directions in Moral Theology, pp.29-30) Moreover, the Drafting Committee insisted that this was “a general principle” which applied right across the board: “Human activity must be judged insofar as it refers to the human person integrally and adequately considered”. In fact, Humanae Vitae provoked such widespread criticism precisely because it seemed to disregard this key principle. The same is true regarding the current official teaching of the Church denying the goodness of sexual love in faithful homosexual relationships. Read more…