Monthly Archives: April 2016

There Are None So Blind…

25 Monday Apr 2016

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The classic example of the Jewish humour trope has been the man who murdered his parents then asked the judge for mercy because he was now an orphan. Well, perhaps until evening Mass in a Glasgow church at the weekend. Feinting with a quick reference to Pope Francis, he hit us with the difficulty of being a disciple. Especially being a priest, him and his fellow priests. What they need, he told us, is encouragement.
We’re all pretty poker-faced now in Church, but that was a strain for others too, I imagine. One of the things not going to plan was that apparently things can be arranged, and “not as many come as were expected”, etc. But ‘encouragement’ was the thing.
I know of only two moments of drama at Mass in a Glasgow church, possibly because those who would be interested in providing one now don’t come. I’m told that in one quite recently the priest said he had a surprise for the congregation, and a couple were to be married during Mass. A man with a young child stood up and said that wasn’t why he had come to this mass, and that it wasn’t the kind of surprise he appreciated, being there with a young child. The other occasion was when the parish priest had to apologise to the congregation for providing them with general absolution on a Christmas Eve, his fellow priest having taken ill, thus leaving a church with a large number of would-be penitents . This of course was the usual ‘Code of Canon Law’ nonsense.
Last night was a temptation, we must say. Some kind of congregation involvement must come. It’s bound to happen, and the sooner the better. Encouragement ? Encouragement ?? It was a bit like listening to Bishop Robson on Pope Francis, Jesuits in general, and ‘Pastors Not Princes’ and being ashamed of not having spoken up, although one person did, very courteously.
Encouragement ? To the Tridentine priesthood? To a group of people in whose hands the provision of the Eucharist rests almost exclusively, and which takes no heed of the Pope’s suggestion that ordination be extended to married parishioners, and who has already done this in the Eastern Church? To a group of people which in fact is preventing the Flock from receiving the Eucharist ?
The concept of ‘encouragement’ has apparently been re-defined . Never afraid of a ‘Titanic’ image when discussing the Church in 2016, we wonder if the passengers fighting for the boats would have been ‘encouraged’ by somebody punching another hole in the side of the liner from inside.
That was all bad enough, and believe us, it was bad enough. But just last week, the local broadsheet as obligingly as ever, provided yet another example of a dirty old man /priest brought to court for paedophily. Yes, another one.
Interestingly, this bizarre sermon may have a positive side. There is a well-supported belief that some animals may be able to detect not merely an oncoming earthquake, but also an oncoming tsunami. Is it possible – is it just possible-that an appeal for ‘encouragement’ suggests a subconscious realisation that perhaps all is not well ? That a microscopic crack has appeared in the adamantine carapace of the concept of ‘Alter Christus’ ? That perhaps the many websites like this which advocate that the Flock should be able to receive the Eucharist , even if it doesn’t suit the Tridentine priesthood, are getting through ?
In other words, is it being realised that Christ’s Eucharistic imperative , which can transform our world , does not have to be the exclusive property of the medieval concept of celibates with an intensive theological education and supported by a parish, but by newsagents, taxi-drivers or engineering technicians chosen by their parish , validly ordained and valid participants in the Apostolic Succession?
If so, why can’t we get on with it ?
We refer you to ‘kintsukorol’ or ‘kintsugi’, the Japanese method of repairing a treasured piece of porcelain by glue mixed with gold . The end product is therefore more valuable than the original. Why cannot our priests add the gold of their dedication and worthiness to the repair of the Church by throwing their weight behind a new kind of Church and enhancing it by getting behind the cause of extended ordination?

If the Pope says ‘No’, they’ll have to have another go…

17 Sunday Apr 2016

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Well, he let them down, didn’t he ? No anti-doctrinal sensations from the Popes . And don’t try to tell us that some weren’t hoping for one, impossible though this would have been. Is is possible that some of them were bishops ?
You can just imagine the Sunday afternoon scene in some building that’s still called a palace, with somebody who still likes to be called ‘milord’, by somebody who /still wears the pectoral cross even at home, even if it’s banging off his knees, somebody who’s stalking about the parlour, shouted at his secretary, hoping against hope that someone will come to the door with a reserved sin to get a penance that will turn his hair white and curdle his blood.
They’ll still have to go on listening to the Pope, if only because there is no other reason for their being taken seriously in 2016 , and that of course mostly all their own fault. They’ll feel better next day, and issue orders for the closure of a few more churches or maybe start a vocations campaign, .
But worse than having to listen to him, and having to show it, as congregations decline and the Flock becomes restive, worst of all in fact, is having to do some work, this time in discernment. The days of saying ‘This is what Canon Law says, so there’ are on their last legs. As the Pope says in ‘ The Joy of Love’ :
‘We also find it hard to make room for the consciences of the faithful, who very often respond as best they can to the Gospel amid their limitations, and are capable of carrying out their discernment in complex situations. We have been called to form consciences, not to replace them…A pastor cannot feel that is enough simply to apply moral laws to those living in ‘irregular situations’ as if they were stones to throw at people’s lives’
‘We have been called to form consciences , not to replace them’
Does the Pope, a man bold enough to say ‘Pastors, not Princes’, and we’ve heard a Scottish bishop, although he’d been a bishop for all of nine weeks at the time, tell us what he thought about that, really understand just how much actual WORK this involves ? How much it involves giving up the addictive taste of power?
‘Capable of carrying out their discernment in complex situations’?
Come on, we bishops do that. It’s our thing. After all, we’re celibate, and we can do what we like. And it’s all been such fun. How can THEY possibly do that?
We have a sudden flashback here to days of being stooped in front of a high chair , picking bits of violently discarded food out of our clothes, and saying to a trembling upper lip, ‘Eat it, it will do you good ‘. Can’t bishops see, given their perspective of more or less unlimited power, that supporting Pope Francis by adopting the extension of ordination actually gives them power beyond their wildest dreams, and hundreds of thousands of new Ordained Celebrants to control?
How, you may well ask, did bishops get this way? One of the answers is how they were appointed, and the Congregation of Bishops did this. Their numbers at one point included Cardinal Bernard Francis Law, still listed on 4th April 2013, at 11.27 a.m. Yes, him. This body obviously jumped through the hoops provided by St John Paul II, the Platonic Relationship Pope , during his lengthy reign. If you said what he liked, you were appointed. We have assessed the price of sending a 2016 calendar to each of the world’s bishops, in case they haven’t got one, but the price is prohibitive.
While anybody still cares, we suggest that the bishops smarten up.
This is now 2016. Accept it, or do the honourable thing.

A World Of His Own- And Definitely Not Ours

03 Sunday Apr 2016

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The homily of the Bishop of Shrewsbury in his Chrism Mass , reported in the online ‘Catholic Herald’, spoke on celibacy: ‘If the Mass were ever reduced to a commemorative meal and the priest as only a community leader or functionary , then the celibacy of the Catholic priesthood might seem extravagant. However once the ministerial priesthood is seen in the light of Christ’s own total self-giving….then the self-giving of priestly celibacy becomes a reflection of the truth of Christ’s own self-gift.’
No one, of course, has wished to see the Mass ‘reduced to a commemorative meal ‘ for several hundred years. Surprisingly, the Bishop does not seem to recognise that as a Lutheran theological position, and a Lutheran expression. He is , irrelevantly, rather dismissive of community leaders or functionaries apparently in general. What exactly he is talking about is not terribly clear, except that it seems to be about the Mass. Now the only recent alteration in Mass and the provision of the Eucharist has been Pope Francis’s permission to allow married men to be ordained in the Eastern Church. If his comments are directed at this, then he must be very careful indeed, because they are therefore directed at the Apostolic Succession. One wonders what Canon Law has to say about this. I
It will be easy enough for some to dismiss this as merely pietistic gibberish. But in his remarks , of course, the Bishop also dismisses the thousand years before celibacy became mandatory and that merely to preserve church property . He may have been having a bad day, but let’s look again at what he says.
Consider : ‘..once the ministerial priesthood is seen in the light of Christ’s own total self-giving’ . One might ask who has ever seen this except the kind of priest who thinks he’s an Alter Christus. You wouldn’t think things could get worse than that. But to equate the celibate ‘ministerial priesthood’ with ‘ Christ’s own total self giving is to equate the cosmic blast of the Incarnation itself with deciding one day not to walk up a church aisle to get married.
At least a line has been drawn. Thanks to the Bishop, there’s now an end to it. As they say, there’s no answer to that! If you’re up there as part of the Incarnation, well that’s it!
To be fair, irony is a tricky concept, often misunderstood. To be charitable in this Easter time, it is possible that the Bishop of Shrewsbury is ironically describing the Tridentine priesthood’s vision of itself. We know, we know, but we have to be charitable. But experts in textual analysis would notice that the word ‘self’ is used three times in the final sentence. What, the untutored might say, about the rest of us ? Still, there’s bound to be an ad limina visit soon. Oh to be a fly on the wall !
The expression ‘commemorative meal’ is rather naughty of His Lordship. But when ordination is extended to parishioners in the Western Church as in the Eastern Church, Mass, be it said by taxi-drivers or newsagents, or community leaders or functionaries (!) , it will provide the Eucharist for the Flock, as Christ asked at the Last Supper.
And it won’t be merely a ‘commemorative meal’ either.