Courtney McGrailOn bbc.co.uk, the Telegraph’s Tim Stanley was a refreshingly new addition to the roster of those who would speak up on Radio 4’s Thought for the Day.
Tim describes how Pope Francis, while flying back from Africa, was asked about the role of contraceptives in tackling HIV-AIDS. “His Holiness appeared to dodge the question – talking instead about poverty and war,” the historian-journalist observes, and so “the translators of papal equivocation pounced. Conservative Catholics said he’d practically endorsed condom use; liberals described his vagueness as ‘shameful’”.
In the midst of all this, Stanley observes, “it was forgotten that the Catholic Church is the largest private provider of care to HIV patients in the world”, adding that it’s important to remember too that Popes are not in the business of rewriting Church dogma. Rather, Stanley says, the Pontiff “tries to embody the spirit of St Francis: a friar who put himself down among the poor and the sick, to let them know that their agony is shared”.
With just minutes to explain what compassion and mercy should mean for a Catholic, Stanley concedes that it can be merciful to tell someone if they’re making a mistake, but says “there’s little point endlessly condemning people for their sins: shame rarely saves anyone. It is better – and more merciful – to show people that there is a road back. And that they won’t make the journey alone.”
Echoing G.K. Chesterton’s famous explanation of why he became a Catholic – “for my sins” – Stanley says that he knows what he’s talking about when he says this as he speaks from personal experience. “I converted to Catholicism ten years ago and one of its most appealing qualities was the practical, tangible nature of its forgiveness,” he says, maintaining that “it is a necessary, human thing to unburden oneself of guilt – and faith offers a solution like no other on the market”.
Mercy too can entail simply helping people who need help, Stanley adds, recalling the no-questions-asked mercy of the Good Samaritan, “who stopped to help an unfortunate soul from a different tribe”. Describing this as the kind of compassion Pope Francis wants us to show the world’s poor at this difficult time, he agrees with the Pope that “they are in need of our mercy more than ever”.
Thought for the Day, Stanley observes in his regular telegraph.co.uk column, “is one of those radio items that has become part of the fabric of British life, whether people like it or not”. Like many a British institution, it is, he says, “disliked as much as loved”, with one of his friends dismissing it as “socialism dressed up as a religion” and another warning that speaking on Thought for the Day entails being switched off by millions.
Still, Stanley thinks, it’s worth the effort, even with its challenging format, allowing for just one point to be made over 500 nuanced words, ideally with a topical and punchy opening. The Today show, in which the Thought for the Day slot rests, has a ‘flock’ comparable in size to that of the Church of England, in a Britain where religion is increasingly becoming a curiosity. “How many times a day are we invited to stop, think and, yes, pray?” he asks, defining prayer as “any attempt to speak to something beyond us”.
“The segment asks us to test our conscience quietly, putting a break on our daily activities and allowing us to consider the infinite,” he says observing “like our lingering regulations on Sunday shopping, these occasional doses of thought-filled time help keep life from descending into consumerism and triviality. The rest of the day is atheistic enough. Leave those three minutes to God.”