Monthly Archives: August 2015

A Straw in the Wind? An Acorn in the Forest?

30 Sunday Aug 2015

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We believe that Christ made the Last Supper the occasion of His most powerful and important statement , namely the Eucharistic imperative.  Trying to help to carry this out is why To Feed The Flock and the other organisations like it exist.

This is why we found an article in this week’s ‘Tablet’ very encouraging. The Movement for Married Clergy surveyed parish priests throughout England and Wales, “ asking them to estimate how many married laymen known to them  were suitable candidates for ordination”.  The 62 priests who replied identified 159 ‘viri probati ‘, men of known character . MMAC feels a projection would  create a larger number.

First of all, an important feature of this is that as many as 62 priests from 300 parishes were able to accept that the Eucharist need not be provided exclusively by the Tridentine clergy, celibate, theologically well-educated and supported by a parish, although at least 238 were not. This is a spectacular breakthrough when added to the recent support for this  expressed by about 10 English  bishops, and indeed to Pope Francis’s decision in January to allow married men to be ordained .We must hope that this is the first major sign of change , while it is still not too late.

Secondly, it is a breakthrough which will be the only way of bringing the Eucharist to China’s millions when they can play a part in the future of the Church.

Thirdly, we congratulate MMAC on the response  ; our 154 emails to Scottish priests on a wider extension of ordination got no response at all .(Check back: we’ve mentioned it umpteen times)

Fourthly, we feel that the concept of ‘married laymen known to them ‘ may change. Looking round  the church at Mass in Scotland, this might just mean  a stifling combination of old ordained celibates and old ordained married  parish worthies. We don’t just hope for extended ordination, but ordination extended to the  two lost generations. This is a cavil, and an important one, but one which cannot overshadow the significance of MMAC’s  enterprise.

We won’t dignify this trivial cavil by calling it ‘Fifthly’, but the expressions ‘married clergy’ or worse still ‘married priest’ tend to bring us out in a rash .’Married  priest’  for some seems inevitably to bring to mind children’s jammy fingers among the chasubles , bell, book and candle for recalcitrant mothers in law, or as was seen recently in a Filipino newspaper, a correspondent’s reluctance to tolerate  the priest’s wife on the altar accepting the Offertory Collections. We find these expressions a roadblock to any rational discussion on extending ordination, but we appreciate that a graduated response is necessary at the moment.

Once again, our congratulations to MMAC  !   Mighty oaks from little acorns grow, although theirs is a fairly substantial acorn.

Scottish clerical child abuse 2006-2012

23 Sunday Aug 2015

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This week the McLellan Report was published. For the benefit of overseas readers, it was an independent review into the child protection procedures inside the Catholic Church in Scotland. There were 46 child abuse offences committed attributable to the Church between 2006 and 2012. The Commission dealt with this very efficiently and objectively. But as the international magazine ‘The Tablet’ points out , ‘it is in effect a vote of no confidence in the Scottish bishops’ safeguarding procedures based on their performances so far.’
For the benefit of those who wish to read it, it can be found in full on the internet under ‘McLellan Commission Scotland’. We owe our thanks to the internet, of course, since it easily provides us with the full information which in a different era might have been felt too difficult or complex for the ordinary non-clerical offertory-collection paying Catholic in the pews to understand , lacking as they do the intellectual ballast of five or six years of theological education, or simply just not being Tridentine priests.
The Tablet wonders if there are ‘deeper questions’ to be answered. ‘Why were some priests tempted to abuse children, and why did they think they could get away with it ?’ it points out, The leadership of the Catholic Church in Scotland has to be accountable to its members. That journey has hardly begun.’
This is absolutely accurate. It will be an interesting journey, from which we hope our bishops will profit while there is still Catholicism in Scotland. It will involve ‘vocation’ and how the assessment of this alleged reason for becoming a Catholic priest allowed paedophiles to do so. It will also have to involve why cover-ups were so important , Scandal is an obvious first answer, but not the only one. Given Scotland’s recent catalogue of clerical sexual adventurism, it will also have to involve the matter of to whom they were so important.
And this journey- at last- will have to be made without any irrelevant protection from that old stand-by , Canon Law. Cardinal Vincent Nichols told the Commission :’Not only the culture of the Church but even aspects of Canon Law may have led to the protection of priests.’
It would be nice if it were revealed also how bishops got the way they are. We think that’s inevitable. And we will certainly provide what observations we can about that.
Signs of a new perception of what the Church should be locally- or everywhere else -in 2015 ? Come on- pull yourself together !
Despite the Pope’s suggestions, despite the views of ten bishops from England and Wales, despite the observations of a number of very respectable websites, it was announced that the Archdiocese of Glasgow will begin a Vocations Drive for the Tridentine priesthood in October this year.
And so it goes on. Or can it ?

Elastoplast Evangelism

10 Monday Aug 2015

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Pope Francis asked us last week to look at divorce through the eyes of children. It would also be instructive to look at our Scottish bishops through the eyes of children, if you like, but more importantly through the eyes of those between twenty and nowadays about sixty. No teenagers of course, who see only old men with funny hats. (for cardinals, make that Italianate old men with spectacles and funny hats).
It’s quite a sight. Firstly, there’s the Elastoplast Evangelists, like the Bishops of Aberdeen, Dunkeld and Galloway . Import clerics from anywhere you can find them, even India in the case of Dunkeld. Anything to keep the status quo , and the position of the Tridentine priest going, with its devastating effect on the provision of the Eucharist throughout the world. Two of them have told us it’s because Scotland is now “a mission country”. Nobody seems to have asked them why.
In the Central Belt, we have Bishop Toal and CurryPowderGate , together with the suppression of a book,and the author punished by a church court. The teenagers will know all about Edinburgh and Cardinal O’Brien .
Archbishop Cushley and Bishop Keenan are, rather belatedly ,reviving devotion to Margaret Sinclair and Our Lady of Paisley , but not with any obvious practical attempt to relate this to providing the Eucharist for those who do not have it, despite the Pope’s suggestions. Archbishop Tartaglia will be busy later on this year with the vocations drive. That’s right.
One can look for cultural parallels to explain this entire situation. There is drama and a certain misguided sense of glory in the captain going down with the ship. Normally, however, this occurs when the crew and passengers have been rescued.
There is another cultural parallel. Sunni hate Shiites . The former feel it didn’t matter who took over after Mahomet; the latter disagree. This has produced the phenomenon of the suicide bomber. Each side’s suicide bombers feel spiritually both justified and glorified by eliminating hundreds of the other at a bus-stop.
It is difficult to find any kind of spiritual justification or glory in bishops not acting on the Pope’s advice to ask for ordination to be extended. It is an actuarial fact that failure to do this will put a bomb under the Church as we know it, both here and throughout the world.
Why cannot our episcopal suicide bombers give us their rationale ? Even the most demented suicide bomber has a reason , of a kind. We suspect our bishops will already have a place in history, however close to the Reformation the parallels may be. It would be at least amusing to find out what they think they are doing.

Time To Take A Hint time

02 Sunday Aug 2015

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As you would have heard , because St Mark’s Gospel is the shortest, it will be supplemented on Sundays during the Church’s cycle this ecclesiastical year  by the Eucharistic passages from St John.

The new cycle of the Church’s year is going to supplement the rather short Gospel of St Mark with extended commentary on the Eucharistic passages of St John.                 Although mind you it’s going to highlight the importance of the Eucharist even more than the prayer life of the Church does normally .

We’ve got to have some sympathy for our fellow Catholics here. Some ordinary Catholics don’t seem to think thousands of their fellow-Catholics, at present deprived of the Eucharist through the failure of the present method of providing it, really deserve It , otherwise they would be joining in the appeals to change things. Some priests – or actually about 150 round about this country-seem to feel the same . Well, they don’t say anything either. And we’ve asked them .

The lengthy emphasis we are promised on the Eucharistic passages from St John, however, must hit our bishops hardest of all.  They’ll have to concentrate really hard all week on the important things that they really have to worry about, despite this constant Sunday harping on the Eucharist and what Our Lord says about It  being such  a distraction .

If you think about it, it’s going to be really burdensome for them. Some of them might actually feel they should  listen to what the Pope has said about the extension of ordination. No, let’s be reasonable !

As has been said, anyway,  it’s tough at the top.