The late and very much missed Father Felix Beattie used to wonder what priests did in the afternoons. Now just half way through 2018 and still no attempt to take up the Pope’s suggestion that bishops discuss extending ordination , let us consider what bishops do. Archbishop Cushley of course will be brushing up on his actuary homework to prove we actually will have x priests in the year x ; another is very worried about Trident and nuclear disarmament , despite the latter’s success in preventing World War 3. But these things pass the time. But ignore the Scottish bishops- we think they ask nothing more- and look at bishops in general , why they don’t want us to receive the Eucharist, and see if we can detect some kind of rationale. Now don’t laugh !
Let’s take celibacy first. They must know why it started- I’ll get on to clerical education next week . In the early Middle Ages, some legitimately married priests were leaving church property to their children. The answer was to confine the provision of the Eucharist to unmarried men without any reference of any kind to Christ’s Eucharistic command at the Last Supper. Presumably our bishops still accept this, which does make it rather difficult to accept anything they say seriously.
This is not a humorous blog , but the next point about celibacy does come up occasionally . No, seriously. It is cultic purity, the idea that women are impure. Before the invention of a practical cold shower , this must have been handy enough as opposed to thinking about it. We apologise for any spelling mistakes at this point : we are trying to imagine the faces of a Scottish congregation on being told this , especially if they read the local press.
People speak of the Mafia , the Freemasons and possibly even the BBC in terms of institutional solidarity. Institutional solidarity with a conscious or subconscious sense of grievance at deprivation of something as human and natural as family life is even more satisfying to experience , and more difficult to combat . Other than just shaking one’s head and walking away , which most people in the Church have simply done. It is a direct refutation of the concept of the Good Shepherd . But if you can ignore Holy Thursday, well, the sky’s the limit.
Possibly literally so.
Some schools have a school song : a line from ours warned about ‘Vana mentis gloria’.If you have your own uniform, uncontrolled authority , even your own language in a way, plus the occasional person still referring to ‘Your lordship’, not to mention Canon Law-framed in 1917, incidentally- to back you up , well why listen to anyone else ? Even to the Gospels on Holy Thursday ? The expression ‘All power corrupts ; absolute power corrupts absolutely ‘was aimed directly at the Church.
The American scholar Marshall McLuhan was partially correct in his very early warnings about the power of the media. A prescient American writer asked ‘What if he’s right?’ as he mostly was.
Do any bishops in 2018 ever ask ‘What if we’re wrong ?’ This is an area never covered by definition in the many writings of St Pope John Paul II, to which they tend as a group to be addicted in every sense of the word.
When will they ever agree that they are , and find their way to extend valid ordination to parishioners ? Can’t they see that their authority is not affected but in fact increased by this, not to mention the transformation to the Church that this would permit ? Perhaps even allowing as a result the Flock to receive the Eucharist?
We celebrate this week the Feast of St Peter and St Paul . We hope that this week they would add a celebration of the life of St Peter’s mother in law, with all its implications.