Cardinal Nichols has come up with a couple of good ones, as he sometimes does. You may remember his comment on a spiritual communion as opposed to receiving the Eucharist. The Catholic Herald tells us that this week he remarked ’Governance in the name of Jesus has no trace of the patterns of the world’s ways- lording it over them ,’ emphasising that it ‘ was a call to ‘serve’ If by ‘has no trace’ he meant ‘should have no trace’, his comment , of course, could hardly be more correct. Otherwise it flies in the face of common experience. An embarrassing moment at a recent public meeting in Glasgow was the speaker referring to a bishop in indirect speech as ‘M’lord’.
‘In my humble experience, ordination as a bishop brings with it a more radical change than even the change wrought by ordination’ was another comment. ‘( We wrestle here with the temptation to comment on the word ‘wrought’ as opposed to ‘made’ or ‘created’, but we fight it and move on. )
If he means here that ordination as a bishop takes him in 2016 even farther away from what a Tridentine priest is supposed to be doing , he is absolutely correct. The Tridentine priesthood in 2016 is practically defunct. The episcopacy then, and we must imagine that he refers at least to the British episcopacy here, has no interest in providing the Eucharist.
But we knew that, of course, last November, when the Bishops of England and Wales ignored a suggestion to consider extending ordination, although the Pope had just before allowed this to the Eastern Church.
If this is the ‘radical change’ which he feels is brought by being ordained bishop, i.e a quite deliberate refusal to follow the example of the Pope, it is one to which he is welcome.
One recalls again the observation of a child on seeing the late Princess Margaret at some function, and enquiring loudly, ’But what is that lady FOR?’
One must ask with equal curiosity, what are the bishops of England and Wales FOR in 2016 if not to do what the Pope asks them ? Especially if what he asks them will bring the Eucharist to many more of the Flock?