Monthly Archives: April 2020

Now 3020..there’s a thought

20 Monday Apr 2020

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Well,Holy Thursday has come and gone, we’ve read the Gospels dealing with it, and we’ve got to admit the truth. Thousands of theologians have studied it, but the truth remains the same. We’re stuck with it.

He was the Incarnation, and His last words provided a means of forgiving our sins and the Eucharist , which he insisted made a contribution to our actual physique, our own bodies in food and drink.

That’s all we know. We can’t know what consequences this may have for our lives. And in 2020 we’re not getting the chance to find out either. Call me an old fuddy-duddy, whatever that is if you wish. I’m just a simple old man. I have not studied theology at the Gregorian- in Latin, of course. I don’t expect theologians to put up barriers up to doing what He asked. I particularly don’t expect the current custodians of the Apostolic Succession in the West to object to theirs being the only possible way of doing what He asked.

Typing ‘2020’ a minute or two ago, I inadvertently typed in ‘3020’. Now there’s a thought. Suddenly we’re right into science fiction, futurism, or whatever you want to call the future of Canon Law(1917,rev.1983) I know I’m dealing with people who can’t see beyond the end of their crosiers. But 3020 ? Waow, as we used to say in the Fifties. Speculation, as sporting journalists like to say, is not merely rife but rather difficult with regard to 3020. The good old custom of burning St Augustine in effigy has long gone, and the world population now one half Chinese will have long ago made its contribution to accepting and living as the Incarnation wishes us to. Parishes will have elected some of their own to provide the Eucharist, under bishops from the many new orders,. It is an unimaginable world, build into your speculations as you wish more world pandemics, massive global warming, meteor strikes, no more Beatles articles in the press, no more press….

Who knows? But there is one thing we do know- again, call me an old fuddy-duddy- we will have the Incarnation and the two constructs which it left us at the Last Supper- forgiveness of sins and the Eucharist. Possibly a little insincerely, I wish those alive then well. ( I find myself echoing the famous 18th century politician who asked so passionately ‘Posterity? What has posterity ever done for me?’

Future historians may laugh- interestingly they almost invariably do at their past- at the insect-like scuffling of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church as it still refuses to accept that time has passed it by. I do not refer to the concept of a ‘priesthood’ denying the gifts of the Incarnation to the ‘laity’. for human reasons, despite paedophily. I’ll do that another time- I may even have done so. I do object to such a ‘priesthood’ distorting the Incarnation for any kind of human reason. (and there’s a thought for a future blog. Without being objectionable for it’s own sake, of course)

I want forgiveness for my sins. I want the Eucharist. I shall be blunt. I want them through the Apostolic Succession, and I- like maybe millions of us – want it now. In 2020. And Canon Law, by insisting on the double necessity of double forgiveness, is preventing us from getting it through the provisions of Canon Law(1917, rev, 1983).

If you are in one of the 50000 parishes without a priest, presumably you cannot receive General Absolution in a penitential service before every Mass, even if you can have a Mass. And if you are lucky enough to have a priest, you still can’t, even if you have been driven away from the current Roman Rite of the Church, and you want to come back. Even if you have what some feel are justifiable doubts about the priesthood. Even if you feel this way, you’re still entitled to forgiveness. Holy Thursday did say so. Holy Thursday, H

Why?

Dr Johnson and The Corona Virus

18 Saturday Apr 2020

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,

It has been said that the main function of confessionals in today’s Catholic churches is to hold the cleaner’s bucket and mop.

Be that as it may, the Sacrament of Reconciliation is certainly taking a very long count , it is generally agreed. It is food for thought that at Mass the numbers of those present receiving the Eucharist are higher than ever. It is highly unlikely that these represent some travelling corps of blasphemers but simply people who try to make their peace with God without going into a confessional.

That this is an unsatisfactory approach has been made clear yet again to us at this season by the Last Supper Gospels , and Our Lord’s quite clear instructions to the Apostles that whose sins they shall forgive, they are forgiven. In other words, a means of forgiveness is in their hands.

The Church , whose foundation the Apostles carried on, has done this in many ways, the most recent being auricular confession- the ‘Bless me, father, because I have sinned’ method we all know.

So if in 2020 people no longer use auricular confession, another much simpler and clearer method of carrying out Christ’s permission must be found. That is what He asked. To use once more this blog’s favourite quote of all time, (yes the one about the Lanarkshire headmaster alleged to have said at a school assembly’As Our Lord said, and I must say I think He was correct’) why don’t we find one ? And why don’t people go?

1. In St Patrick’s Anderston,Glasgow, there was a confessional which was entirely dark. My grandmother once went into it, found her way to where she felt the grille was, and stated her case for forgiveness, to hear a voice behind her asking,’Were you looking for someone?’ To be more serious, some people have apparently had very bad experiences in confession, some true some probably fictional. Some also may well have asked for what they got through trying to con their way to absolution by showing no signs of a firm purpose of amendment. Not everyone finds auricular confession congenial, but we are all human and that form of coming back to God is all we have within the sacramental framework.

But need it be ?

2. Tragically for everyone, particularly for non-paedophile priests, social media tells us of those who cannot bring themselves to confess to a priest in case he is a paedophile. (The writer has had the experience of doing this, he later discovered. It is not a comfortable experience), In general, given all the paedophile criminality and its cover ups, there must be a certain amount of perfectly human resentment. Few penitents, I suggest, are capable of accepting the legitimate intellectual acrobatics of ‘ex opere, operato’ and don’t see why they should chance it.

3. Behind this lies what the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church stubbornly refuses to accept, that there are people who in 2020 do not like or trust the secular priesthood. The reasons for this are understandable and human but the current system does not allow for them. The Flock wants to have its sins forgiven as is its right. If this only this could be accepted, our Church would be transformed.

4. All this could be avoided if the Roman Rite would allow the Flock to receive General Absolution in a penitential service without the necessity of having sins forgiven twice (!) by later auricular confession, almost always to a secular priest, celibate and supported by a parish, as Canon Law insists. The Roman Rite was moving towards another point of view, I believe, until this was stamped out by the Polish Pope and the Emeritus Pope. (No comment- at the moment)

5. Dr Johnson once said, not entirely cynically, ‘When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully’. I think all of us know the feeling in April,2020. We all hope that many of the Flock’s disaffected will want to come back. 2020 may be a great opportunity for the Roman Rite to atone for all the disasters of its past by changing Canon Law to allow a penitential service with General Absolution at the start of every Mass.

6. You may well ask why this bizarre addition of double forgiveness is added to General Absolution . It is well concealed. I have searched the internet until my fingertips are in ribbons , and I have found a possible reason ! A priest on the internet says: ‘Hearing confessions is spiritually very healthy for priests’. Oh well, that’s all right then. In all charity, even with a couple of gins, I cannot accept this as a reason for depriving the Flock of forgiveness.

7. The Roman Rite, through the Corona virus, has been prevented from ministering to the Flock. Once this scourge has left us, it can again offer forgiveness- and the Eucharist- to the Flock. May it do so in an entirely new way by allowing a penitential service before every Mass, without the absurd necessity of further, auricular, confession. The penitent makes his or her disposition personally to God. That is enough within the context of General Absolution.

8. To avoid any possible misunderstanding about the orthodoxy of this blog- which is about as orthodox theologically as one can get without being offensive-I refer you to Cardinal Pole at the Council of Trent. He pointed out that the Council should not conclude that because Luther said it’therefore it is false’. So there.

Who is Canon Law ?

04 Saturday Apr 2020

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(Remember two things :

1. There are 24 parts to the Catholic Church. The Roman Rite- our branch- is only one of them

2. Canon Law was put together in 1917 (rev.1983)

I once met someone who thought Canon Law was a person-a parish priest somewhere .Someone who does think he is Canon Law has emerged from the Vatican woodwork. Always mindful of the Vatican principle of blinding them with science, he scrupulously follows the routine by not using 20 syllables where 40 is more fun, He is called the head of the Apostolic Penitentiary. A Cardinal Piacenza.

(I’ll let the statutory Italian name and the free use of the word’apostolic’ go just now. There’s a time and a place)

This is what he said the other day :

‘Even in the time of Covid 19, the Sacrament of Reconciliation is administered according to the norm of universal Canon Law and according to the provisions of the Ordo Paenitentiae’

Well ,that’s it. Tough if you’re dying, but Canon Law comes first. Let’s have a look and not for the first time at Canon Law.

As I may have said before, Canon Law was not put together by the Apostles in the Upper Room because they had done all the crosswords and were passing the time. Canon Law was codified in 1917- an instruction from St Pius X beyond the grave- : ‘with a view to put together with order and clearness all the laws of the Church thus far issued, removing all those that would be recognised as abrogated or obsolete, adapting others to the necessities of the time, and enacting new ones with the present needs’ (Among those who put it together was young Mgr Pacelli, who did quite well later on)

Note that these are the words of St Pius X, a pope with all the flexibility of Pol Pot on a bad day. I’ll repeat his words:’adapting others to the necessities of the time, and enacting new ones in conformity with the present needs’.

What is upsetting the Apostolic Penitentiary is the very idea of any change in the matter of General Absolution.

I remind you: General Absolution, according to Canon Law (1917;rev, 1983) insists on conditions about danger of death, plus the ridiculous necessity of confessing later to a celibate pries supported by a parish. There were none of these persons, of course, until the 16th century and these conditions cannot be found in any Gospel account of the Last Supper, the sources of the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Given these two circumstances, I say to him:

1. The death roll in Italy and elsewhere in a world with a priest shortage

2. ‘adapting others to the necessities of the time , and enacting new ones in conformity with the present needs’

Why is he going on about the provisions of the Ordo Paenitentiae?

Why is General Absolution not being administered generally, and without any musty and irrelevant inhibitory blethers from him? Does he not know that otherwise sane people are already debating the lunatic notion of absolution by phone- or Morse code, or semaphore flags or hell know what due to him?

When the Roman Rite staggers to its feet again before the overdue realisation that it cannot continue, Cardinal Piacenza may have a place in history, although not one he may want.

The point is it may not staggers to its feet, as the world lives on for the first time since the first Holy Thursday without the Mass being available to us.

I feel oddly glad.I think it’s too late. The Roman Rite is defunct and in particular with regard to the forgiveness of sins .Its right to insist on forgiving sins in its own self-centred, weird power-possessed way- not that it ever had one- was killed off by Covus 19.

May it forgive our sins. And then let us also have the Eucharist. That is what the Church is for, and what is the Roman Rite to inhibit it ?

The Church has 24 sections. It can have as many as are needed. The Polish Pope established a new section in 2010, the Macedonian Rite. Pope Francis established a new one in 2014, the Eritrean Rite .

Why can’t the Roman Rite die in a dignified way, and let us follow Christ’s Last Supper instructions by having our sins forgiven and receiving his Body and Blood ?

Why not ?