Sometimes we are stopped in our tracks. Sometimes we just have to stand open-mouthed. Sometimes we wonder if we have wandered into an alternative universe. Such was the effect of the most recent edition of the Glasgow Archdiocese newspaper ‘Flourish’.
The headline in very large letters is a quotation from Archbishop Tartaglia :’ This is what I long for people to read and understand and act upon. To receive Holy Communion is everything…’
Now I don’t know if the Archbishop has read ‘To Feed The Flock’ .I do know he –well, at least had in his hand the statement we made to the Scottish bishops a few years ago- because he was the only one who had the courtesy to acknowledge receipt of it , if they all actually received it; I don’t know if he has kept up with many other websites who think like us and make the same point. I don’t know if he reads the small Catholic magazine ,Open House, in which we have made the same points: apparently only one Scottish bishop knows it.
So much happens in our world on a daily basis that one is spoiled for choice in speculating what future Catholics will make the subject of Ph.Ds. A certainty, however, is ‘What Happened to the Bishops? ‘
What happened to a lot of them was St Pope John Paul II. The hissing sound of the Big Bang which started the Universe was detected by Robert Wilson and his associate not very long ago in the Bell Laboratory in New Jersey, and can still be heard on websites. The effect of the Big Bang which was S PJPII can still presumably be heard in the brains of those who were his appointments as bishop.(This does not apply in full to Archbishop Tartaglia, who was selected by Pope Benedict before he sensibly decided he would rather step down than be associated much longer with SPJPII, in our opinion)
Many possible candidates for bishoprics presumably thought SPJPII was the cat’s pyjamas. Many others made sure SPJPII heard they thought he was the cat’s pyjamas. There were certainly plenty of them. The Curia certainly seems to have thought he was an example of this remarkable image. After 30 years or so, it became difficult to avoid thinking as he might have thought. To follow his thinking could be difficult. At one point, celibacy was all, where the priesthood was concerned. At another, one could permit Anglicans with wives and families to join the priesthood. He could be a confusing old chap to follow. His confusing relationship with another man’s wife –chaste though it was- was a particularly confusing scenario, so confusing that it was considered better to tiptoe around it.
What we were left with – and it was obviously genuinely felt – was that for many reasons it was better to try to do what he might have wished us to do , while ignoring the Gospel, of course. After all he was now a saint, however precipitately , according to at least one great Catholic thinker ,, his canonisation may have taken place.
Anyway, thanks to the paedophile scandals , their cover-up and perhaps a natural evolutionary process based on the much misunderstood idea of the survival of the fittest, the secular or Tridentine priesthood declined, deteriorated and became ultimately defunct, with 50000 parishes left without a priest .
Now, everybody knows this, especially in those parishes where Catholics are born, live and die without the Eucharist. It’s very simple. For a part of the Church’s existence- a mere thousand years or so- the provision of the Eucharist was largely in the hands of the secular priesthood, for the silly purpose of protecting Church bits and pieces of stone. Now that the secular priesthood has no credibility, another way has to be found of providing the Eucharist.
Pope Francis asked very early in his papacy that bishops consult him about extending the /function of providing the Eucharist to others, in particular married laymen in parishes.
The world’s bishops know this, but if any bishops have consulted him about this, it is news to us.
So what are the consequences?
Do Bishops think the Pope doesn’t know what he is talking about, even when he suggests a way in which Christ’s Eucharistic imperative at the last Supper may be implemented., even when the alternative is for it not to be implemented at all ?
Do Bishops not accept that married laymen , although validly ordained , are part of the Apostolic Succession ,and therefore deny the Apostolic Succession ?
Do Bishops not see that a change from the defunct secular priesthood to a different method of providing the Eucharist gives them a unique position in the transformation of the Church in a transformed world, under the guidance of the Paraclete ?
We must remember that individual Bishops have only one vote in a Bishops Conference or whatever it’s called. Elderly Bishops for physical, mental or even a distorted kind of intellectual reason or simply because of the natural human tendency to fear and suspect any kind of change, crippled even by the kind of mental cancer which we call nostalgia, are obviously a problem.
Admittedly we carry our treasure in frail vessels.
But why can’t we all get the Eucharist as Christ asked?