Madam,

I refer to Caleb Spencer’s article on the town council’s refusal to back Bishop Thomas Matthew’s demolition plan for St Winefride’s.

I was present at the Town Hall meeting to which he refers, and I, like him, found it “extraordinary”. I found it extraordinary because it wasted public resources, humiliated a senior religious figure, and went against the council’s code of conduct.

The chairman, mayor Brendan Sommers, and Cllr Lucy Huws should have declared their interests, as Catholic parishioners.

The agenda was set by an opening statement which should have been the bishop’s to give, but was instead Professor Frank Hogg’s, of SOS.

Parish members with different (and majority) views had to fight to make themselves heard. The self-declared “friend” of SOS, Cllr Ceredig Davies, proposed the motion, and it was predictably passed.

What’s sadder still than the waste of public resources and the wilful humiliation of a senior religious figure, is the impotence of its outcome. St Winefride’s is no longer a legitimate church building, and no amount of posturing to the contrary will change that.

It may surprise town councillors to know that Rome’s (three) rulings have greater authority over the bishop than theirs do, but it shouldn’t surprise members of SOS.

The church is not a set of standing orders at a town council meeting. She is not, in fact, any kind of democracy; and while one would naturally expect secular town councillors to find our ecclesial hierachy odd, discomfiting, or anachronistic, one should not easily expect the same mockery of it from a small but vociferous sub-section of the town’s Catholic community. It is not the bishop who stands in the way of unity, but those who pursue unachievable ends by cruel, unjustified, and ultimately powerless means.

How silly it all is: to fight for bricks and mortar, when souls remain to be saved!

Yours etc,

Reuben Purchase, Aberaeron.

Have your say on the local issues affecting you - email [email protected] or join in the conversation on our Facebook page