Mary Kenny
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, was much praised for writing openly about having suffered a miscarriage last July. She and Prince Harry felt “unbearable grief” after they lost their second baby. The miscarriage occurred while she was changing the nappy of her one-year-old son, Archie. “I knew as I clutched my firstborn child that I was losing my second.”
Sorrow
She wrote about her experience in the New York Times because, she said, many women went through the sorrow of miscarriage, and it was seldom spoken about. “Despite the staggering commonality of this pain [of miscarriage], the conversation remains taboo, riddled with shame, and perpetuating a cycle of solitary mourning.” Although she acknowledged that not everyone wished to speak publicly about their private issues, she wanted miscarriage to be recognised as “a grief” and “a loss”.
Indeed so. Miscarriage should be recognised as a real loss, and in recent years a more sensitive attitude has developed among the medical profession. In our mothers’ time, the medical view was, “get over it – put it behind you.”
An unbearable grief
Yet within Meghan’s plea for understanding and compassion for those who lose a child, there is another message, of which the Duchess herself may not be entirely aware. She is describing a pregnancy (and she hasn’t disclosed how many weeks she was pregnant) as “a child”. She calls this episode “an unbearable grief” and a cause for mourning, because a human person has perished, albeit in the course of nature.
Duchess Meghan has given recognition to an affirmation always made by pro-life advocates: that the unborn is a human life.
Meghan, now aged 39, was brave to expose her feelings in the way she did, as she does attract unkind criticism and malicious remarks: there’s a simmering British resentment that she “stole” Harry away from his family, his country and his regimental mates, turning him into a hipster Californian. So she is vulnerable to the brickbats.
Harry’s feelings
She has also exposed Harry’s feelings, by being open about this personal – and family – issue. Harry said a little while ago, in his support for climate change that he would only have two children – “two, max”, in his own words.
But Harry, too, was devastated about the miscarriage. It may cause him to reflect that we cannot always assume that we can have the number of children we “plan”. Sometimes nature, both benign and destructive, is in the driving seat.
Hopefully, Meghan and Harry will be consoled by another pregnancy, safely accomplished.
Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith
Fr Tony Flannery, who has had his difficulties with the Vatican, has been asked by the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith to assent to Catholic orthodoxy on a number of issues, including “gender theory”. Fr Flannery has quite reasonably remarked “I don’t know enough about gender theory to have any strong views on it.”
Allow me, if I may, to elucidate “gender theory”. Basically, it rests on the notion that there is no such thing as biology: male and female differences are merely “socially constructed”. That is, they are made by society, not chromosomes. The most influential gender theorist is an American academic called Judith Butler, whose prose is almost incomprehensible, but whose power has entered, and conquered, practically all of academia.
This is behind the muddle over trans-genderism and whether persons born male can become women, including menstruating, giving birth and breast-feeding. Contradict this at your peril! The Guardian’s star columnist, the left-wing feminist Suzanne Moore was denounced by over 300 of her colleagues and had to quit her job because she challenged “gender theory” with the revolutionary claim that only women give birth.
The Vatican is on-trend in raising the inflammatory issue of “gender-theory”, and Fr Flannery is probably wise to withhold any opinion about it.
Anyway, it’s a welcome step that Fr Flannery has been allowed to say Mass again for the funeral of his brother. Any ordained priest should be able to say Mass, it seems to me, and doctrinal differences with the Vatican’s office should be put in a separate category.