He has risen, as he said he would. Alleluia, alleluia.

“..in his accepting death as a human being and in his rising from the dead, he achieved a new phase of evolutionary existence for the human species, into which he could then usher his fellow humans. In this way he would save them from individual death and extinction, which appeared to be the evolutionary fate of all human things,and would impart to humans through that association with him that richer share and eternal communion in the divine Trinitarian life that is God’s evolutionary design for them ” (Jack Mahoney, SJ :’Christianity in Evolution’)

A great buzzword among what were called ‘conservative Catholics’ use to be ‘cafeteria Catholicism ‘. This of course was uncharitable at least, and possibly even intended to be offensive. It suggested a ‘pick and choose’ mentality rather than a considered opinion that something was past its best. Although why go to a cafeteria and choose to get food poisoning ?
Representatives of Glasgow’s clusters- ours is Cluster 21-were invited to St Andrew’s Cathedral on Monday evening. There was some kind of service, we presume. Then it and other clusters were to file through the Holy Door. The congregation was likely to be 70+, and on what was a chilly night- it is still March- they were to shuffle through the Holy Door. Any of them with any grasp of symbolism would no doubt try not to consider that other door they may well soon be going through, but that’s a detail.
The cathedral is situated on Clyde Street, a dangerous street for large crowds because one side of it is the bank of the river. Crowd control for those willing to see this procession will be essential/. But wait, there’ll be no teenagers there. Or few if any twenty-year olds. Or thirty-year olds, Or forty-year-olds. Or fifty-year olds. Or even positive thinking 60 year-olds. They have mostly given up on the Tridentine priesthood. Well, they live in Scotland .
This is an interesting service, this. Now Pope Francis inaugurated this ceremony as part of the Year of Mercy. So they’re doing what the Pope wants. But he has also asked for other things. Yes, you guessed- dialogue with his bishops about extending ordination. A possibly inebriated local theatregoer is said to have stood up in a Glasgow theatre after a particularly turgid drama of local interest , and cried ’Whaur’s your Wullie Shakespeare noo?’ (to translate for overseas readers: ‘Where is your W.S. now ?’) We would echo him simply by saying ‘ And where’s your cafeteria Catholicism now ?’ Why aren’t Scottish bishops discussing with us the possibility of extending ordination to parishioners and thus providing the Eucharist for more ? And just think of the impact on the Church if even Catholic Scotland, given O’Brien and all the rest of the sad paedophile parade, were to express their loyalty to the Pope by doing this? Who knows what other countries would follow?
Instead on Monday night, the Seventies, a group well used to shuffling through church doors behind a coffin, will be doing so behind this time an invisible coffin. Guess? Correct: the future of the Church in Scotland.
The Scottish episcopate is given to moving abroad at the turn of the year to one of its now disused seminaries in Spain- last year Salamanca, this year Valladolid, I’m told- to discuss what’s what. Abroad, of course, to gain maximum objectivity.
Was there a discussion about Getting Them Used To the Idea Of Clusters ? They’re going to have clusters and like it, so let’s go?
Once again, to put it colloquially, do they think we’re daft? Abraham Lincoln may be long dead, but his axiom on kidding the people lives on. The pioneering work of people like Vance Packard in ‘The Image Makers’ has been going on for about fifty years . Honest, we all know about consumer manipulation. Really, we do. Or are they inspired by the almost equally pedestrian if temporarily successful Scottish National Party image makers and their Wallace the Bruce, Rabbie Burns, Bannockburn, etc, etc, claptrap? And the free prescriptions, of course.
The great Thirties Catholic G.K. Chesterton controversialist once demolished the pietistic rhetoric of a famous advocate in a poem with the simple refrain :’Chuck it, Smith’.
We would say , equally simply, ‘Chuck it, bishops !’. Listen to the Pope. Accept that the Tridentine priesthood is not the only way to carry out Christ’s Eucharistic imperative. Think of the poor in huts and leantos in places like the Philippines and the Honduras. Give an example to the rest of the Church’s equally slow episcopates.
Instead of a rather elegiac backward-looking service like Monday’s, think what we might have had. Ordination services in local churches, with a group of parishioners, preferably young, duly ordained to provide the sacraments for the parish , and at ceremonies like it all over the world, new vitality breathed into the life of Catholic Scotland, and to parishes all over the world.
There’s an old saying : ‘A son is your son till he meets a wife, but a daughter’s your daughter for all of your life.’ In 1175 Pope Alexander made the then Diocese of Glasgow a ’Special Daughter of the Roman Church). Everybody- and we mean everybody- knows that it’s been a bit of a Prodigal Daughter, although not in the same class as Edinburgh, etc. Wouldn’t it be nice if the Archdiocese of Glasgow came back home to Pope Francis and said –right, Ordained Celebrants from the parishes, as you allowed in the Eastern Church-can we help? What a lift for the bruised and battered Catholics of the Archdiocese.
Face it. It’s even an Oscar winner. The day of the Tridentine priesthood is done.
Give the people the Eucharist. And again we ask as Holy Week approaches , why not ? Literally in Heaven’s name, why not?