Much of this has come from the expected quarter. Madcap proposals such as having Pope Benedict arrested for supposedly presiding over the cover-up of sexual abuse worldwide could be safely ignored as excitable publicity stunts if they did not reflect a general mood that is being stirred up by a variety of commentators. Even state officials, who drew up and disseminated a satirical and offensive anti-papal memorandum, got in on the act.

There is nothing unjust about engaging in robust debate on matters concerning the Catholic Church and its supreme pontiff. Indeed, provided it is grounded in respect, such a dialogue is welcome and necessary.

Alas, much of the criticism of the pope and the Church lacks not only in respect, but also in a close relationship with the truth. In that way, Pope Benedict has been held principally responsible for the scandal of the cover-up of sexual abuse of minors in the Church. The image, based mainly on a misunderstood document issued by the then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, has been held up as “evidence” so many times that it has taken on a life of its own.

It is not unreasonable to examine the pope’s position in the scandal, but such scrutiny must reflect the full story. In the commentaries in Britain’s secular media, it does not always do so. Indeed, there is a palpable whiff of anti-Catholicism about much of the British media. Whatever the causes of antipathy towards the Catholic Church, there is something troubling about the nature in which that opposition sometimes is expressed, in a country where Catholics once were persecuted and not accorded full rights for many centuries.

That history of persecution should not be invoked as a shield from valid and fair criticism, of course. Nonetheless, sometimes public statements regarding the Catholic faith exceed the bounds of fair comment, and should be tempered, because they do rouse sensitivities about the anti-Catholicism of old.

More than likely, the pope’s visit will draw impressive and enthusiastic crowds. It will help to energise the Church in Britain, and it will communicate to those who maintain a hostile attitude towards the Church that Catholicism in the country is not about to vanish.

Likewise, big crowds will also reassure Catholics that the pope is not travelling to an altogether hostile country. The papal visit will most certainly encourage the Church in Britain. It will not solve, however, the ambivalent attitudes of many British Catholics towards the Church’s teachings on artificial contraception, abortion, divorce and homosexuality.

There are those who hope that Pope Benedict will emphasise these issues during his visit, believing that Britain has become “the geopolitical epicentre of the culture of death”, as Edmund Adamus, director of pastoral affairs in the archdiocese of Westminster, has suggested.

The pope doubtless will address these issues. When he does so, to reach those not persuaded by the Church’s teachings, he will need to measure his words very carefully. More than that, an overemphasis on issues of sexuality and reproduction would shape the media coverage at the expense of other important messages Pope Benedict will bring to Britain, such as the Church’s social teaching and, of course, the Good News of salvation.

Many opinion shapers will be watching the pope very closely, ready to feed and exploit any potential controversy. May Pope Benedict walk on the fragile British soil at once with energy and delicacy.

Mother Teresa made it clear that she and her Missionaries of Charity were called to do small things with great love, and this love was to find expression here and now in caring for those diseased, weak and dying people that nobody else was prepared to look after.

She worked in the context of Calcutta’s impoverished hordes, not in the circumstances of the ready availability of hospitals and efficient emergency services. She would physically comfort and support the weak, saying that if they had never had love and respect before, she and her Missionaries would give it to them before they died.

The arguments for and against Mother Teresa’s work and methods will not be resolved without an appreciation of the deepest meaning of Christian love, that is, a humble and unconditional love for others.

As a faithful Christian, Mother Teresa saw her work as Christ’s work. She accepted the Church’s condemnation of abortion, but it would be wrong to brand her as a hard-line traditionalist without knowing all the circumstances of the stand she took on the issues of the day in Calcutta.

People in India and beyond admired her for her simple life in the service of others. When she died in 1997, the streets of Calcutta were brought to a standstill by the enormous crowds that came to pay her tribute.

Aside from her receiving the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1979, she was awarded many other international honours, and India regards her as one of its greatest boasts. It seems a bit rash to pick on her now as a failed philanthropist.

How could the “No” side lose in a country said to be up to 80% Christian? The subject has been discussed endlessly in Kenya. Quite apart from the fact that the new constitution is a far better supreme law than what we inherited from British colonialists and that it was supported by large sections of Kenyan society, it is believed the Church’s opposition failed because Church leaders are no longer heeded by the faithful.

In fact, an opinion poll by the respected Synovate group shortly after the referendum showed that only about 19% of Christians trusted their spiritual leaders on public issues.

The priest-journalist’s idea a few years back could have changed much of that. He had suggested that the Social Communications Department of the Kenya Episcopal Conference should get the e-mail addresses of all the priests working in the country.

Whenever the bishops issued a statement, they should not just read it at a news conference. The document should also be posted immediately to all the priests around the country, with instructions that it be translated into vernacular (where English or Kiswahili is not widely used) and then read out at Mass on Sunday.

In the dioceses, communications coordinators should also have the e-mail addresses of all the priests and send them the bishop’s official documents every time he issued them. That way, the Church leaders’ positions on important issues would be well known to the faithful.

Kenyan bishops speak out often. But their messages hardly reach the faithful. The matter basically ends at the news conference, which could get only a few minutes in prime-time news in the event that editors decide it is important. That was the problem the priest-journalist wanted to solve with his simple e-mail idea. But nobody took it up.

Over 70% of Kenyans rely solely on radio for news and information. Yet the Catholic Church has one small national radio that is heard only within 150km of the studios in Nairobi. The station is at the bottom of the broadcasting pile because it lacks resources, competent personnel and official interest.

The furthest the national Catholic monthly magazine reaches is probably the diocesan offices. There are a few other magazines published by religious congregations or institutions.

Because Church media in Kenya is woefully inadequate, the bishops have to use the vibrant secular media. They buy space or airtime at exorbitant rates. Or they can do news conferences and wait for their detailed pastoral letters to come out as mere sound bites taken out of context or a few column inches in the newspapers.

The result? Organisations and institutions with deep pockets saturate the media with their messages and the Church is obscured. That is mostly what happened during the referendum campaigns.

In the last week, “Yes” teams ran adverts accusing the Church of spreading lies about the proposed law. An informed source told me Church officials crafted their own adverts in response. But they were told by media houses that it was well past the deadline for campaign adverts set by the elections commission.

My point? Our Church urgently needs to address its communication crisis. That is what the priest-journalist had in mind with his e-mail idea.

We live in the information age. If you are not seen or heard in the media, you simply don’t exist.

The Church in Southern Africa observes Social Communications Sunday on September 5 — this year, suitably, on the anniversary of the death of another great communicator, Mother Teresa. On this day, the Church turns its mind to the way in which it preaches.

In his annual message for World Communication Sunday (of which Social Communications Sunday is the local variant), Pope Benedict quotes St Paul: “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel.”

The Gospel is preached in many different ways. The priest’s homily at Sunday Mass is the most obvious example. We may even proclaim the Gospel without saying a word, by deed and by example.

Our evangelisation efforts require individual contact. But, as St Paul knew when he wrote his letters to Christian communities and as the evangelists acknowledged when they put down the gospels, the Good News and all that is associated with it (even the disagreeable, as we read in various passages in the New Testament) need a broader audience too.

For this reason, Pope Benedict this year encourages priests in particular to make use of the exciting, and perhaps daunting, opportunities presented by modern methods of communication.

The pope wants a clergy that is at home in the digital world. “Priests are thus challenged to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources (images, videos, animated features, blogs, websites) which, alongside traditional means, can open up broad new vistas for dialogue, evangelisation and catechesis,” he wrote. In doing so, they should reach out “to those who do not believe, the disheartened, and those who have a deep, unarticulated desire for enduring truth and the absolute”.

Doing so in creative ways may involve having to take risks, of course. Outside delivering their homilies, many priests are cautious about making statements in public because they fear being misunderstood, misquoted, appearing inarticulate or otherwise being open to rebuke. Clearly, communicating with the public is not a suitable vocation for every priest. Some will have talents best employed in other fields.

But for those with a faculty (and, of course, the time) to write a blog or engage with people on Facebook, the new media can be a most fertile mission field. It may even be a way of promoting vocations by increasing the visibility of the clergy and presenting the priesthood as an affirming life choice at a time when many Catholics see their priests only at Mass.

But the public engagement of priests also requires tolerance on the part of the Catholic community. If we do not like the way a priest evangelises on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, or disagree with his blogging approaches, he must not be discouraged by denouncements and ugly criticisms. When priests (or, of course,  religious sisters and brothers) reach out by innovative means, they should be commended and encouraged—and, if needed, engaged with constructively.

It is perfectly conceivable that Jesus today might use YouTube videos to teach the multitudes, or engage with modern-day Pharisees on blogs. And St Paul might well use Facebook to let the Corinthians know how he feels about their squabbles—and at the same time inform the Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians and Romans of his concerns
and joys.

Some time ago, Vincent decided to update the history of St Thomas’ church, dealing mainly with the buildings on the present site and the clergy who laboured for souls over the years.

In 1868 the present church site in Mossel Bay was bought and a house built. For a long time it served as presbytery and chapel. Between 1873 and 1882, while the French Missionary Fathers of Lyon were there, the only other building erected was a small hut that was used as a school.

In 1885, when the area fell under the vicar-apostolic of the Western Province, a more suitable one-roomed school was built.

In August 1895 Mossel Bay got a young priest, Fr Bernard “Bernie” O’Riley, who did wonderful work for the mission. One of his first achievements was to convince Bishop Rooney that it was necessary for the Holy Cross Sisters to run the school and obtained permission from him to convert the little school into a church and at the same time to convert part of the presbytery/chapel into a school with a much larger teaching area.

When the Sisters arrived in April 1904 they moved temporarily into the property across the road that had been donated to the church. They stayed there until the school was converted into a church in September the following year. Fr Bernie moved into the premises the Sisters had been staying in and the “old” presbytery and the chapel became the school.

Because of the new church and the fact that the Sisters were so successful, they approached Fr Bernie to get him to arrange for the building of a larger school. He agreed, but could not again turn to his bishop or to his parishioners for further assistance. In the end someone suggested that he write to a Mr Page in Cape Town. In his letter to Mr Page in May 1907 Fr Bernie wrote:

“It is not often that I venture to trouble you with a letter, but the urgency and genuine necessity of the case I am about to put before you induces me to plead on behalf of the little Community of Sisters of the Holy Cross who are making a hard struggle here to educate our Catholic children under almost impossible circumstances, and I feel confident that their case will appeal to your wonted kindness and generosity. The matter is in reference to the convent school here.

“For a couple of years that the Sisters have opened a convent and school in Mossel Bay they have done remarkably well in spite of the many difficulties they had to contend with. They have a school of over 50 children (which is their sole means of support), but they could easily have double that number if they had only school accommodation, having refused many applications since. As it is, they have entirely sacrificed their own comfort and accommodation for the benefit of the school and the children.

“There are four decent rooms in the house that does them for a convent and three of these they have given over entirely as school rooms to the children whilst the Sisters themselves sleep and live mainly in the garret of the house and you can imagine what it is like in this climate to sleep and spend the day beneath the bare zinc roof of a house, not to say anything of the damaging effect it must have on their health.

“Moreover they have no government grant for the school which would be of great assistance to them, but they dare not even apply for such for were it granted, to a certainty their present school accommodation would be condemned by the inspector on his first visit and the grant consequently withdrawn.”

Mr Page eventually loaned Fr Bernie £500 on condition that he said 500 Masses for Mr Page’s intentions. As soon as they had been said, the principal and interest would be cancelled.

The main reason for highlighting this was because during Vincent Rayne’s research – after having read about how these wonderful nuns had sacrificed so much for the Church, the God they loved, their religion and for the families at the time – he decided to go up into the garret himself to have a look around.

“I was amazed to find what I did about the few Sisters in those tough times. That garret was apparently their ‘home’ for nearly two years!

“Those Sisters certainly carried their cross,” said Vincent. He writes about his experience of going up into the garret, during which his torch battery ran out: “That was scary. How could they have coped without proper ventilation, light and ablutions? How did they climb in and out of that area? I struggled and I’m quite athletic, despite my 68 years! It must have been like a furnace during the humid summer months and freezing cold during winter.

“Vincent’s research, assisted by Sr Mechtildis, has identified the “Garret Dwellers” as Srs Philothea Krugger (superior), Mary Louise Mayer, Sebastiana Steinfels, Gonzaga Hageneder, Wilhelmina Wägeli and Frumentia Gollhofer. Sr Philothea was one of the pioneer Holy Cross Sisters who came to South Africa from Switzerland in 1883.

It’s a wonderful story that highlights just how dedicated the early clergy and religious were in their quest to bring Christ to our country.

We know that the Catholic Church has throughout the ages regarded humility as one of the signs of sainthood, which is why it is not surprising that Pope Benedict is taking the process of Cardinal Newman’s canonisation to its penultimate step by beatifying him. The other requirement of a posthumous miracle has also been reported in the US. Among the things Newman thought would count against his saintliness was the fact that he was a “literary man”.

Cardinal Newman’s writings had tremendous influence on unlikely characters, such as James Joyce, who thought Newman had one of the most polished writing styles in English. I concur. I find Newman’s arguments eloquently put, in a clean classical style which is as attractive as it is persuasive. Eagleton seems amused by the biographer’s tendency to force the virtues of secularism on Cardinal Newman, at the expense of his religious convictions – making much more of how he wrote than what he wrote about. Still Eagleton finds the new biography refreshing because of the fact that it is not preoccupied with the cardinal’s supposed sexual orientation, casting its interests wider than other contemporary analysts have managed.

Eagleton says the cardinal was “first and foremost a writer” whose genius lay in “creating new ways of imagining and writing about religion”. Additionally, Newman was a writer of internalised morals, but I suppose that was left out for the sake of appeasing a readership that takes interest only in works with no religious overtones. Newman doubtless believed literature – great literature – refines our sensibilities, deepens our understanding of human nature and sharpens our moral acuity.

I’ve observed many biographers flounder when it comes to explaining Cardinal Newman’s political and religious beliefs. The closest they get is labelling him a conservative, which illuminates nothing. This seems to me because they start at the wrong end of the analysis, and do not attempt to define the meaning of the terms they talk about. There are basically three major liberal strands of thought over the past several hundred years: utilitarianism (Bentham, Mill), contractual or “procedural” liberalism, and liberalism grounded more deeply in Aristotelian theories of virtue. The last is a distinctly minority viewpoint close to Newman’s beliefs. It stresses the importance of group solidarity without falling prey to igniting ethnic and religious tensions.

Virtuous liberalism puts into a balancing mixture what is good about liberal ideals, like religious tolerance, equality before the law, and representative democracy. Further still, it assumes and seeks to affirm a dense network of social relations we in Africa know as ubuntu. What I think confounds many people about the likes of Newman is that he’s also what is referred to as a “soft anti-liberal”. Soft, because they verbally malign liberalism yet, when faced with practical choices, reveal a surprising fondness for its protection of individual freedoms.

Because virtuous liberals are also almost always against the erosion of social memory (injustice through the back door), you are likely to find them standing with the poor and oppressed, advocating major assaults on economic inequality, for example. This explains why, though Newman was not a socialist, he did not encourage the elite privilege of his birthright, which led to him founding the Literary and Historical Society while he was rector of the newly established Catholic University of Ireland in Dublin, that opened up tertiary education for the under-privileged.

Since I found the last biography of Newman a little too heavy on elaboration and light on evidence for my taste, I look forward to reading Cornwell’s, especially since Cardinal Newman was a tremendous influence in my conversion to Catholicism.