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 ?