Monthly Archives: December 2016

Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot ? In A Sense, Yes!

18 Sunday Dec 2016

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Is it possible that the many blogs like ours are getting through ? Well yes, but just perceptibly , judging by two letters in this week’s ‘Tablet’.
One, from the Movement for Married Clergy, refers to ‘the diminishing diocesan clergy’. But it then advocates ‘admitting mature married men to the priesthood’, ‘mature’ here being coy code for ‘elderly’, we feel. Another letter on the same theme suggests adds ‘perhaps retired’ where ordination has been extended, but rightly wonders if ‘years of study and extended training’ are really necessary?
What is it with this confining the provision of the Eucharist to a few, this time the old ? We defy them to find any kind of restriction in Christ’s Eucharistic imperative. But above all- what age?
It must be remembered that the Church has lost two generations at least. So they should be talking to twenty-somethings. Twenty somethings, human experience tells us, are not normally particularly interested in old men. This probably applies particularly to Catholic twenty- somethings, with their burden of clerical dirty old men, selfish old men who covered up, and silent old men in episcopates who refuse to listen to Pope Francis’s invitation to consider extending ordination , and therefore prevent so many from receiving the Eucharist. We chose the word ’burden’ carefully, because the pederast priests will always be a cancer in their spiritual lives, a barrier to creating a sense of spirituality within their adolescent families, and a barrier, sometimes of bafflement and sometimes of spite, between them and neighbours and those in the workplace.
And ‘mature’ doesn’t make sense given the usual ‘Ah, but’ of those who try to use so-called ‘tradition’ as a weapon. Some look back- and ‘nostalgia’ doesn’t do it justice for intensity – to the good old days when umpteen priests were ordained every June . And they were all about 25 years old ! Were they all stored away like wine to mature? As we say in the West of Scotland, that will be right ! In many a parish, one could easily be crushed underfoot in the rush to receive the young priest’s blessing, accepted by many as primus inter pares.
(I halt to remind you that nobody in To Feed The Flock is under 80 years of age)
Why should those who provide the Eucharist have to be old, or celibate, or well-educated in theology, or have to be anything else ? Why should anyone deliberately, for any human reason, create a barrier of any kind between the blazing incandescent gift of the Eucharist through the Incarnation and the rest of the human race ? How do those that do sleep at night?
But it is Christmas, and we do try show that we have accepted its message, and are above all charitable. . To Feed The Flock humbly asks you to share our prayers that those who through whatever fault-line in human frailty , be it some pathetic distortion of the importance of professional solidarity, be it through some even more pathetic loyalty to an institution, be it a sense of personal insecurity in a rapidly changing world, be it incipient senility, or simply stupidity, may accept the validity of ordination through the Apostolic Succession and let parishioners provide the Eucharist for the Flock.

A Merry Christmas to all our readers.

What makes Bishops Tick?

04 Sunday Dec 2016

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The Oxford Dictionary has chosen ‘post-truth’ as the international word of the year. It refers to a situation in which objective facts are cast aside in favour of appeal to the emotions.
And here we have just the very word for the response for far too many of the world’s bishops to the needs of the Church , not to mention their response to Pope Francis.
Let’s ask the Bishops to look at their relationship with Pope Francis factually then in terms of emotion..
Fact: he is the Pope even if you don’t like him. Don’t ask us to choose- he hasn’t . Yet.
Emotions : Irritation at the way he seems to dance around various situations. Although you were irritated by him from the start , possibly although ridiculously because he came from a religious order. And it was the Society of Jesus. So don’t blame him now he’s got into his dancing stride , irritating though it may be.
Frustration, because he wasn’t Pope John come back to life to reward you again for the loyalty which you so clearly demonstrated to him before being appointed bishops .
Anger, because he may be a threat to the Code of Canon Law which has been such a comfort and support to bishops in 2016, even if it was put together in the very different world of 1917. Test this with newspapers. Find one dated 1917, and one of today’s.
Fear, because has allowed the Eastern Church to permit Extended Ordination to married laymen. The professional solidarity of the Tridentine priesthood is therefore revealed as just professional solidarity and quite irrelevant to Christ and the Incarnation itself .( And in any case,disturbingly similar to many other examples of professional solidarity) . He has made it clear, as Pope in the Apostolic Succession, that a taxi driver, a store manager or an IT technician of the Eastern Church can Feed The Flock just as well as any Tridentine priest.
Other emotions , and/or our interpretation of them might lead us to being uncharitable.
A simple answer to the post-truth episcopate versus the Pope –I know it’s boring, boring always banging on about them- can be found in the Gospels where Christ meets the Samaritan woman,.
Let’s take another post-truth Episcopal situation. There are now not enough Tridentine priests to continue the provision of the Eucharist for the Flock. There will not ever again be enough to do this. Neither should there be, objectively. The last two –or perhaps three- generations of Catholics and most tragically the youngest have repudiated the Tridentine priesthood, always now defined for them even more tragically in terms of pederasty first and foremost. But the post-truth mindset moves into emotional gear when ordained laymen are considered as the very obvious solution to the Flock being denied the Eucharist. What emotions are involved?
Nostalgia, surely, although it has been accurately defined as a form of intellectual cancer. Ah, those were the days when whatever drives the elderly episcopate was functioning freely. A world in which a look at the index of Canon Law could solve all their problems , if not those of the Flock , of course. Anger, at upset apple-carts ? And ,to be charitable, possibly even frustration at being here just before a time when the Church may change, and for the better .
It is here that Cardinal Burke’s Gang of Four may serve some useful purpose. Some may see them simply as old men who, after a lifetime of never being frustrated or contradicted, feel suddenly insecure. Others may see their activities merely as rancid and embittered politicking . Who knows? We have our view, but all Pope Francis has done , in an interview with the Italian Catholic newspaper ‘Avvenire’ is to speculate that rigidly legalistic thinking is driven by psychological needs, and is a way to ‘hide one’s sad dissatisfaction ‘.
He is, of course, well aware, of the intensity of feeling which any kind of change may lead to in the minds of an elderly Curia-based “opposition” , apart altogether from the Gang of Four, and may sense the possibility of a new schism, the last thing the Church needs at the moment. Try even moving the furniture a little- a very little- in an old person’s room, and you’ll see what we mean.
A real and valid emotion for the episcopate- possibly even world-wide-after the momentary exhilaration of Pope Francis’s death , must be fear. What will a new Pope, chosen by his cardinals, decide to get the Church back into touch with the Flock ? Many possibilities present themselves, very few of which, we venture to suggest, will not be welcomed by those of the Flock who are at present unable to receive the Eucharist.