Monthly Archives: October 2016

We Will Follow ‘Follow, Follow’ !

16 Sunday Oct 2016

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This blog is based in Glasgow and Central Scotland. So far it has reflected the views of a very large section of the world-wide community of Catholics, and joined with them in deploring the apparent inability of the Tridentine priesthood to realise that it no longer functions as it did.

We have had a wide variety of readers from all points of the compass. It occurs to us, given the extent of world-wide media information, that spiritual life in Glasgow and Central Scotland can demonstrate a more complex texture than we have hitherto explored on this blog. It is perhaps enough –and many of our US readers will understand this perhaps better than our loyal South American readers- that this not unconnected with the Irish background of Catholic life in Glasgow and Central Scotland.
We halt to add that this is not a pro-Irish blog, nor an anti-Irish blog, Irish by background though we are. But, when discussing Catholicism, we do share some of the irritation felt by Churchill after World War I, when he saw ‘the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone ‘ emerging once again. Again, we have to agree with Sir Walter Scott : “I never saw a richer country, or to speak my mind, a finer people; the worst of them is the bitter and envenomed dislike which they have to each other. Their factions have been so long envenomed, and they have such narrow ground to do their battle in, that they are like people fighting with daggers in a hogshead.”. Both obviously deal with Ulster.
The problems of Ulster need not concern us, since they appear to concern property disputes from the seventeenth century. We are aware that hundreds of people are killed by suicide bombers daily as to whether Mohammed should have been succeeded by relatives or not in the eighth century. Neither is a credit to organised religion, as we are so often told by liberal opinion, although we feel that this is just an excuse for any kind of stigma with which to thrash a dogma. As a matter of interest, neither money nor sex , with their chequered histories of impact on daily life, shall we say, ever seem to be held up for similar criticism.
Anyway, we are not interested in Ulster culture, and we want to get it out of the way in this blog as quickly as possible. . But it does impinge upon Catholic life in Scotland . We would like to look at one aspect of it- and we suspect that not merely our US readers and our South American readers, but indeed those on other planets- if any- will find it intriguing. It is the tendency of some of our fellow citizens to take up a different theological position by demonstrating their alternative viewpoint by marching through our towns occasionally in costume with musical accompaniment. Sometimes this is given a semi-balletic dimension, and while we are sure this is not the intention of the marchers, regrettably this complements the theme tune of those apparently most theologically opposed to the Church. The refrain expresses the desire of this group to march up to the knees in Fenian blood ,a point of view often expressed by the gait of the marching bands.
‘Fenian’ here is a not very subtle code word for ’Catholic’. To save our readers heading for Wikipedia, it refers to a nineteenth century Irish revolutionary group, whose successes were in inverse ratio to those of them which were organised in the back rooms of pubs. It was condemned by Pope Pius IX in 1870 at the special request of the bishops of Ireland. At the moment we cannot go into exactly why ‘Fenian’ should therefore mean ‘Catholic’ in Scotland in 2016, nor frankly do we particularly care, but we assure you that it does. Illegitimacy does not as yet have the same politically incorrect clout as colour or race, but you can take it from us that this delay is thoroughly exploited in Glasgow and Central Scotland by those of a different theological position. In fact, the illegitimate factor always accompanies ‘Fenian’, producing a combination which is as semantically bizarre as it is, shall we say, uncharitable.
In Scotland, Catholics are unpopular. Our religion tries to follow Christ’s precepts , among them to bring the Eucharist to the world. Obviously, the ministers of our religion have done nothing recently which would change that hostile point of view. And that is certainly the most charitable statement of the case as we can make without yielding to physical nausea.
We feel it is our duty to look at why our fellow Christians dislike us and therefore the message which we bring.

Why are Catholics disliked in Scotland ? We propose to look into this

What This Blog Is For

11 Tuesday Oct 2016

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Our quarterly reminder of what this blog is for.
It lends its support to the Pope, to many Bishops and to the dozens of Catholic groups who have advocated the extension of ordination. This is important because about 50,000 parishes throughout the world have no priest. Apart from not being able to receive the Eucharist as Our Lord asked at the Last Supper, they have no spiritual life. Extending ordination to parishioners would end this situation.
It is also of particular importance as China becomes the leading world power. The spiritual hunger of the Chinese people has become obvious over the last forty years or so as millions tried to find spiritual satisfaction in the weird Falun Gong cult. They are well aware of the deficiencies of the defunct Tridentine priesthood. Can we ask them to accept it ?
All that is required, we repeat, is the election by parishioners of some other parishioners to say Mass and provide the Sacraments, but not preach, the Sacrament of Reconciliation being provided by General Absolution once the nonsense about sins having to be forbidden twice is forgotten.
Our message is simple. There is nothing that the now defunct Tridentine priesthood did that cannot be done by a validly ordained layman. To deny this is to deny the Apostolic Succession, which has carried the Incarnation by way of the Eucharist through the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution and the Age of the Dictators. It is carrying it through the onslaught of Islam. It will continue to carry it Christ Himself has assured us into an unimaginable future .
The Tridentine priesthood served its purpose well. The encrustations of possibly inevitable handicaps like celibacy to protect church property , but without the spiritual energy of poverty and obedience, the burden of unnecessary theological intellectualism, and the straitjacket of institutionalised tradition have paralysed it, just as an old ship is slowed and brought to a halt by barnacles and marine growths. . And it has been effectively scuttled by some of its crew.
We repeat : there is nothing that the Tridentine priesthood did that cannot be done by validly ordained laymen. To deny this is to deny that the Apostolic Succession as a vehicle for the Eucharist and the message of the Incarnation for the future.
Those bishops who cannot accept this may be misguided , or not very bright or whatever. Why are they unwilling to tell us why ?

When will the facts be faced ?

02 Sunday Oct 2016

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An excuse for the Germans used to be “intelligent but misguided’. Apparently it’s not just misguided . Thanks once again to the ‘Tablet’ – and who knows where we would be without it in Britain? The Central Committee of German Catholics, the umbrella organisation of lay Catholics and Catholic organisations , 20 million strong ,sponsored a debate on the drop in vocations in Germany. Although at least they do have such an organisation, unlike us. But even the president of this, Thomas Sternberg ,was ready to ‘demand that proven lay people be ordained’. He also wanted married deacons to be ordained, but let’s stay serious at the moment.
The word ’proven’ connects with a priest we were speaking to last week. Two boys had passed by him, one of whom he knew from a previous parish. He said, ’Oh, hello, Father’; the other said quite clearly ’paedophile !’. The priest’s reaction to this was interesting. Rightly, he took the second to task for his impertinence. The terrifying thing is not the word, quite inapplicable in his case, but that this reaction to it seemed to be his only one.
Although otherwise highly intelligent, he still seems to be living in an age when the Tridentine priesthood meant something. Even ten years ago, would that situation have been possible ? We have moved on far from the age when parish priests ruled their fiefs like mediaeval barons, when even the most ordinary Catholic priests were treated with respect, even if only because of their office as providers of the Eucharist. But that was then. Now they can be insulted in the street, even if there is plenty of proof of what the boy felt when he saw a priest.
Even if Tridentine priests have to accept eventually that ordained laymen can provide the Eucharist just as effectively as they can, the ordained laymen would apparently have to be ‘proven’ .
‘Proven’ to whom? ‘Proven’ in what? Can this conceivably mean found satisfactory to some group of Tridentine priests? The local press has provided in recent years a variety of reasons why this is going to be very difficult to take seriously . It is not too much to say that the Tridentine priesthood is now an obstacle to our relationship with Christ.
And we must not forget the efforts of the media in this, especially television. Whatever its motives- and what actually can they be- the BBC has worked well at this, in particular on the lines that Anglican curates are largely imbecilic. I think ‘Father Brown’ is an ITV product. The character obviously can hardly be depicted as an imbecile , but wears the ridiculous shovel hat, actually only found in Rome, to make sure he is never confused with real Catholic priests. As the poet once said, ‘others abide our question- thou art free’, and undoubtedly ‘Father Ted’ is the apotheosis of anti-religious proselytism There is apparently a humourous dimension to this programme ; would that there was one to the present position of the Tridentine priest.
When ordained parishioners are accepted, if there is still a Catholic Church in which they can function, it will probably be found that few of these negative qualities exist in the average parish. If they do, their proponents are likely to be well known to the parishioners who alone should have the right to elect . ‘Proven’ must now mean , and we can forget its slightly pejorative connotations here ,’ proved’ only to their fellow parishioners. Any other concept of ‘proven’ would be ludicrous. The German sense of humour is apparently elusive, but two expressions currently in colloquial use express degrees of derisive disbelief : one is ‘You’re having a laugh’, and the other is LOL (‘laugh out loud’ to non-texters) . Both are applicable, especially when we are talking about the approbation of those who satisfied the criteria of an organisation which takes five or six years to assess its entrants, and which has so spectacularly failed to do so accurately. For sheer arrogant dismissiveness, the use of ‘proven’ by the Tridentine priesthood – or some of them- takes a bit of beating.
To get back to the Germans and the other side of the argument: as the Australians would say,’ No worries’ in any case. Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki of Cologne said ’relaxing the rule of celibacy would not help the situation.’ Oh well, that sorts that out. Silly us! He said a new evangelisation is called for, to acquaint or re-acquaint people with the Gospel message. We should all, of course, have thought of that ! OK, there’s a tiny problem in that if there are no more vocations, then there will be no more Church, but the cardinal offers no explanation of how it should be done. A topmost cherry on the Schwarzvalde Kirchetorte, or Black Forest gateau for those who haven’t been to a high class funeral lunch in a hotel recently, was provided by the German bishops’ conference director of vocations, Fr Michael Maas, who said that the root problem was that the church was not flourishing , and it was crucial to win young people back into church. As they used to say in our youth ’Waow’! How lucky we all were that such intellects did not play a more important part in recent German history!
We ask again- and not for the first time- what is special about the Tridentine priesthood as a provider of the Eucharist? Where in the Gospels is this found ? Please tell us what you think. Is there some kind of rationale behind this? Any kind of rationale? Or is it simply a very open and frank refusal to accept the validity of the Sacrament of Holy Orders ?