Pope Francis is quoted a lot. Possibly therefore he is misquoted a lot. We’re prepared to give him all kinds of leeway. If he’s asked a long question and says ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ , did he necessarily have time to examine the question carefully? We know, we know, we’re on his side.
In March he was extensively quoted on the subject of ‘viri probati’, or ‘approved men’, a concept dreamt up by Emeritus Pope Benedict for keeping control of ordained laymen. Worse still, he was quoted as actually saying’older viri probati’.We have searched the internet diligently , and there are only some references to ‘older’ when this quote is mentioned. So who knows? But just in case, we propose with all due deference and respect, and certainly more than we would give to StJP2or EPBen to lay about us.
If you have and have always had a full-time job in the Vatican, and you are in your late seventies or eighties, we have to put it to you that you have never had anyone say to you ‘Do you know what the hell you’re talking about ?’ (Add being a Jesuit Provincial to Pope Francis’s case). Go quite far down the pecking order and add old Mgr X or old canon XXX (yes him!) in Glasgow. Has it ever happened ? Or have just always confused the clergyman with his function?
Anyway, another time for that, but we have to put the question, fearlessly as ever, to Pope Francis.
‘Probati’? Approved? Approved by whom? We prefer to speak only of the Church in Scotland, beginning with, of course, Cardinal O’Brien , and working our way down the list of pederasts, mistress-keepers and embezzlers who have disfigured its work in recent years. But we will not do so, even if only because this PC is on its last legs. They were all approved. We know nothing personally of , say, the Church in the USA other than what we see in Oscar –winning films, or in Australia /from what we read in best sellers like Thomas Keneally’s latest. We wish we had a German correspondent.
Effective and efficient approval, we will say, has not been a gift given those in the Church whose business, even after six years or so in a seminary, is assessing candidates for the priesthood. A parish is a community, sometimes far flung, sometimes in a city. To regard it simply as a collection of faces beyond the altar rails is a mistake.
The suggestion that a parish would select , among those whom it would choose as being worthy of being Ordained Celebrants , those who are unworthy is a slap in the face to any parish, a vibrant and infinitely complex network of family and social relationships , and frequently uncharitably so assessed. Would any parish choose for election a sexual adventurer, a pederast or an embezzler to represent it? And if some chancer should escape scrutiny, we must remember that 8.5% of the Apostles betrayed Christ Himself.
Approved forsooth, the latter word being one we have always wanted to use.
We are reluctant to believe that Pope Francis said’elderly’.This is where we have to ask even Pope Francis if he knows what he is talking about. It is also a criticism of celibacy, and its failure to provide a life lived among the young.
We find a succession of rhetorical questions incredibly irritating We will simply make a series of statements . If you disagree, you know where we are. We remind you that the average age of members of To Feed The Flock is 80 plus.
Teenagers think anybody over 21 is middle-aged. The expression ’coffin-dodgers’ is widespread, and applicable to anyone over 40. ‘Elderly’ is commonly considered a euphemism for Alzheimer’s. Those between 30 and 40, who have fought the good fight and are still church-going, don’t really know what life is like in 2017. A 70 year old is a dodderer, be he lay or clergyman. Older people have let the Church become what it is today,without challenging Cardinal O’Brien and his like. If an old man can relate to Christ and his teaching, therefore how can he relate to life as a Catholic adolescent? Those who remember Stephen Fry must ask-what would he have said?
All of these ideas help to keep the third lost generation from the Eucharist.
Elderly? Come, come, Pope Francis, if you actually said this.