A Covid era picture showed a large empty parking lot. In the middle is a priest and , in an obvious representation of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, a penitent is kneeling beside his chair.

Why was there not one of the priest standing on the chair with his parishioners around him,properly masked and distanced ,of course, giving General Absolution ?

You may well ask. And not just in Glasgow. Why should this be the case ?

The 108 year old rusting wreckage of Canon Law still stands, although compelled even a few weeks ago to spit out defective parts in yet another clerical pedophile trial-historic- in Glasgow. As priest numbers continue to shrink, neither Archbishop Nolan of Glasgow nor Archbishop Cushley of Edinburgh will allow General Absolution ,of course with the mysterious insistence on confessing the sins again later .I say “mysterious “ because this appeared in Canon Law 1917 and not in AD 17 .You see, Canon Law1917 says there must be “grave reason “before the Flock can be given the Eucharist without confessing to a priest. This apparently does not include the deaths of 7 million people through Covid

You may remember the apocalyptic atmosphere of Covid ,with not even TV journalists knowing what would happen next ,the queuing in twos – and occasional fist fights -at supermarkets. Nobody really knew what would happen next.And the regular news of deaths, local,international.Was it to be a slow motion death of society. Nobody knew . One day in Covid I stood in Great Western Road at Byres Road, one of Glasgow’s busiest junctions ,on a week day at noon.As in a sci fi film, not another human being or vehicle could be seen. There seemed to me to be a “ grave reason “ but I didn’t study in Rome.

Perhaps the many other secular bishops like Nolan and Cushley felt that it might diminish the faith of the Flock were they to challenge Canon Law. Or not, of course. With the secular priesthood ,and there’s not many of them, and the Roman Rite not far above the level as the Druids , why is nothing happening about General Absolution ? Or did not enough die ? A lot of people body swerve secular priests for various reasons, and the secular priesthood does not have much going for it nor will it ever again. Does it simply fear losing the grip of confession and absolution ?

That’s a terrible thing to say, you may feel.

It is indeed.

I felt I needed a laugh last week, so I thought I would write about synodalism , but I might have known. New pope ,new hope, new start ? Forget it. In Scotland it was the same old story to kick the feet from us once more .Yet another pedophile-this time a predatory prelate -remanded in custody for historic child abuse.But it is still the Roman Rite, so what can one expect ?

The Roman Rite, you’ll remember , is one of the 24 “rites” or methods which the Church uses to bring us the Eucharist. It is obviously enormous compared to the rest because of when and where it was founded . It worked as well as could be expected until 1135 when celibacy was made mandatory ( priests were allowed to marry and the children of some occasionally sold Church property. Heavens !)

Along came the Reformation, with it panic, seminaries for priests not in religious orders and junior seminaries ,eventually bishops who had been “away to be priests” and after them bishops which meant they were bishops who could move from childhood to second childhood without knowing much about real life. For instance, things like the loss of coping with adolescent changes in perspective ,of handling money and of everything else in a rapidly changing world.The readily available experience of many makes it clear that outside influences were effectively censored , and their intellectual development deliberately stunted for the sake of discipline and the image.

Then came Canon Law- not in AD 17 by the way but uselessly in AD 1917, at the end of an era,but still the equivalent of a tactical nuclear weapon in the hands of what many bishops had become, ruling the Church by discipline and controlling promotion. Who am I to say they did not have the interests of providing the Eucharist at heart, but their reputation for concealing pervert priests shows they could not handle that devastating wound to the Church. And its cancerous affliction has been fatal.

Does the Flock still have to accept that the Roman Rite and its secular priesthood is still an effective means of providing the Eucharist as Christ asked ? Or in fact does it refuse to do so ?

An effective Pope will : 1. Rule that all bishops must come from the religious orders . The triple vows of poverty,chastity and obedience carry more weight than a promise to be good or concern about whether electric cars are really better. 2. Ordain parishioners to say Mass and provide the Eucharist ,like the “Masspriests:” for a thousand years before celibacy (sermons only from the internet ; the Sacrament of Penance by General Absolution). 3. Accept that the Roman Rite is defunct .

And, whoever he is, let us hope is quick about it. The Flock is waiting.

There is no justification in 2025 for the Church to allow the Papacy to waste the Flock’s time .The notion that an elected pope must go on until he drops does just this . The

Surprisingly-to me at any rate-it was Pope Benedict was the first for a long time to retire ,on the sensible grounds that he was tired ,and felt he had nothing to say. The Polish Pope,somehow, felt it was better to spend years of suffering with Parkinson’s and other ailments to let the Flock see how to take suffering, rather than help them by retiring .This might have saved ten years of nothing being done about clerical abuse of children . Also, as he modestly remarked, were critics asking Christ to come down from the Cross?

Consider also once you get your breath back even Pope Francis may well have found it difficult to watch his back as well as his front, but when you have to be carried about everywhere you’ve actually lost a lot of attention .

I may have quoted Eamon Duffy on this before but why not : “The notion that earthly authority is underpinned by heavenly sanction may fly in the face of known experience but the hope that it may be has proved remarkably hard to eradicate.”

Let a reasonable retiral age be chosen and stick to it -65 or 70 max. Otherwise old men run the Church. Old men, especially in their eighties do not get much done. Old men function on irrelevant memories. Old men can’t keep up well with new ideas. The Church is obsessed with tradition and precedent ,a direct insult to the Holy Spirit when you think about it.Old men quaver “But is there a precedent ?”,an appeal rapidly abandoned at the suggestion of trying a mouthful of herbs instead of dialysis. Those still capable of thinking should remember what they thought of people even as old as thirty when they were in their teens.

Is there any organisation which drives with the brakes on ?

And above all can this stupidity ever help to provide the Eucharist for the Flock as Christ asked on the first Holy Thursday ?

What the new Pope must do

The new Pope must buy property, but not in Rome.Rome as the administrative centre of the Church is offensively Eurocentric ,especially as it shrinks in authority and numbers .Modern communications technology makes this unnecessary. Worst of all the congealed mass of bureaucrats in the Curia and in the one tiny area automatically leads to the idea that the Church can only be run by a clergy.

The world is full of unused office property without which no great city is apparently complete. Empty office blocks , in Los Angeles, Jakarta ,Manila,Lagos or where ever must be bought for the Vatican. Its weirdly named committees-“dicasteries “- can ba allotted a new city in minutes. The world’s great companies, I am sure, will be delighted to lend their employees if necessary. Unimpressed and unimpeded by the centuries of documentation felt by the Curia to be a bulwark against change, the New Curia can place it reverently aside , and let the Church get on with its life.

When church attendance proper is allowed to restart ,it seems reasonable to assume that, after a year without the Sacrament of Reconciliation, those who still use it will wish to do so. This will mean even longer lines at the confessional than at Christmas and Easter. Also, a world pandemic may have caused some lapsed to re-assess their spiritual position.

From the point of view of the lay person, it would therefore be a good idea to begin the first Masses of the re-start with a penance service, followed by General Absolution. I suggested this to an episcopal person ; he assured me of his prayers. Fine; but you can bet the answer of the Scottish bishops will be that this is against Canon Law.

1. Some may curse the internet, but it means that we no longer have to take that as an answer without knowing what they are talking about.
2. Canon Law was codified in 1917. The last pandemic was in 1918. Therefore Canon Law can hardly be expected to have made allowances for Covid-19. In this respect, it therefore has no relevance to 2021.
3. Canon Law was established by St. Pius X in the motu proprio ‘Arduum Sane’ on 17th March 1904 His Holiness, as is well known, was no happy-clappy OTT trendy churchman.
4. What did he, the proponent of Canon Law, actually say? It’s on the internet ! His reasons for having a codified Canon Law were ” 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 times and enacting new ones in conformity with the present needs”.
5. I draw to your attention “adapting others to the necessities of the times”.
6. But- thank again internet- Canon Law (Canon 961.i.n.2) says only if “grave necessity”.
7. In 1917, the last pandemic the codifiers had heard of was the Black Death, 500 years or so before. The next pandemic was in 1918, the Spanish Influenza. As we look around us at the world wide devastation caused in 2021 by Covid-19, why do we see no signs of General Absolution being universally permitted the minute this becomes legal? What do today’s bishops consider “grave necessity”? A meteor strike? The arrival of hostile extra-terrestrials? One Scottish bishop instantly realised the problem and implemented it, but no more has been heard of this, and you may well ask why not. Outvoted , perhaps? And don’t forget if it comes to it that General Absolution can be implemented by each bishop as he wishes.
8. Once again on this blog- I know it’s a bore and all that- I have to turn to the Gospels of the Last Supper, that point in time at which the gifts of the Incarnation were given to us: “Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven”. Anything at all about “grave necessity”?
9. Above all, anything at all about having to confess sins already forgiven by General Absolution later auricularly ,usually to a secular celibate priest? Not in my copy of the New Testament!
10. The forgiveness of sins has been carried out in many different ways- once again, try the internet. Why are we, the Flock, apparently stuck with a theory about this concocted in 1917, in a world so different from 1917 that it might well be on another planet?
11. We must ask our bishops why they do not freely permit General Absolution. I cannot see why they do not. That “it’s not in Canon Law” won’t do, as you have seen from the above.
12. Why can’t we have our sins forgiven ? Why , in 2021, not ?

It was November 2018, the Vigil Mass. He is Fr Joseph,SJ (his surname). He is not there now because in 2019 he was appointed Catholic Chaplain at Birmingham University. A brilliant preacher, possibly to awaken a rather wet and somnolent congregation, he pointed out that he was not a Roman Catholic, but that he belonged to the Syro-Malabar Rite. The result was a classic example of what I think is called the Magellan Effect, although it happened to several Spanish explorers. Native is searching the beach pools for juicy crabs, sees two or three galleons sailing in , assumes it is a hallucination . He hasn’t seen one before, can’t imagine it and therefore assumes it doesn’t exist. The congregation, solid Scots-Irish-Italian stock, assumed they couldn’t have heard Fr Joseph say what he said.

I forget how many Catholics I have asked how many parts there to the Catholic Church, and I have asked many. If you know, bear with me. Damn few do. It’s even worse than asking senior citizens in which film do Alan Ladd and Count John McCormack appear in the cast list (if you must know it’s ‘Citizen Kane’, and that’s true as well.

There are 24 parts. To confuse the issue, they are called Rites , owing to trivial differences in liturgy hundreds- or even nearly thousands- of years ago. The local version is called the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. The Roman Rite contains about one billion-on paper anyway, nowadays. It is also called the Latin or Western Church. The rest-Ruthenian, Ukrainian, Maronite, etc-some measured in millions in the US and Australia- are the Eastern Church. Google the Coronation of Pope John XXIII, and you’ll see a couple of them, well ahead of the game with half beards, wearing what appear to be top hats which have had a bad day, and singing fabulously.

This is where I am asked one or two questions at least, The first usually begins ‘Surely…?’I am used to this of course, from where I used to work. 1. ‘Surely it is ONE Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church ?’ I then have to convince them that ‘one’ does not actually mean’ one’. This can end the conversation, but he distinction is between arithmetic and attitude. Believe me, the other 23 Rites have the Pope as their boss. Never keen on being confused with the Roman Rite, possibly a hundred times more so since seeing ‘Spotlight’ on Netflix, they are as Catholic as you can get , without a Donegal connection, oddly enough. Imagine one of the big tourist liners, now practically derelict, with a skeleton crew and the infection which chased away the customers. That’s the Roman Rite, the one with the nonces, the Western Church; the Eastern Church is two or three trawlers and the rest rowing boats.

2. Questions at work -not often- began ‘Is it in fact the case that…?’ Are these ancient Rites merely archaeological survivals or other euphemisms for the foosty and the irrelevant ? Well, no. The Syro-Malabar Rite, to which Fr Joseph belongs, functions very successfully in Glasgow. Founded by St Thomas- yes, that St Thomas, the Apostle, it shares the church of St James in Pollok on a Sunday evening. Goggle it to see a church jam packed, in those days so recently when we could go to church without making an appointment and being civil to pass keepers. (NB : When Googling all this, if necessary, key ‘Eastern Catholic Churches. Avoid the word ‘Orthodox’ or any site containing it like lumbago. It’s a very elastic term.)

Still, you may say, these Rites are essentially relics. Oh? Pope Francis established the Eritrean Rite as far back as 2014. Dammit, even Pope StJP2 established one in 2001. Fancy telling him it was a relic? On Yotube there is a few minutes of the Eritrean Rite, as different from the Mass we are used to as you can imagine, but still providing the Eucharist as Christ asked at the Last Supper, the ultimate blazing act of the Incarnation, to take the Church through until the end of time.

The Church was founded to provide the Eucharist ; the Roman Rite has 50,000parishioners now with no priest, and therefore no Eucharist, since4 apparently it can only be provided in the Roman Rite by a celibate priest supported by a parish (Apart from the religious orders). What a shambles.

A stroke of the Papal pen is enough to create new Rites or sections of the Church , sections without the appalling baggage of paedophily, which it is really impossible to explain to our children and grandchildren.

What about a Third Church, to follow the Western and the Eastern, to function beside the Roman Rite and its loyal priests and parishioners ? What about, say, an Atlantic Rite -with a bishop from one of the religious orders- which would include Britain and Ireland? What about new US Rites, Spanish Rites, Indonesian Rites- and above all Cantonese and Mandarin Rites?

Unless perhaps assassinated by some monsignor, this bloggist will continue to ask – why not?

And when we can all meet in public, if ever apparently, we will ask this in public.

We must move on.

It’s time for new Rites- and it’s right for the time.

Well, here we are. People are allowed into Mass, after the pubs were opened of course, but have to be masked, distanced and give their names and addresses. Forget the singing, the handshakes and holy water, although I will not miss the first two. In the bazaars, they are saying that normal Sunday Mass attendance will be as soon as 2021.By that time.of course, that Catholic stuff will be pretty well a thing of the past, and how many of the missing generations will be back ? Especially when they notice that yet another priest of the Archdiocese is suspended and under police investigation for- well, I think you’ll have guessed. A battered-looking old film star of the Thirties made a final bob or two by singing, or her take on this process, a song called ‘When Will They Ever Learn?’ Even now you may say? After the catastrophe of Covid 19? After all this? Another shepherd of the flock under investigation ?

I don’t think they’ll ever learn. By ‘they’ I don’t just mean the Archbishops and Bishops of Scotland, that local part of the ecclesiastical Jurassic Park known as the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, although please do count yourself in, lads. So here we are, the Flock of this part of northern Britain, waiting for a simple distribution of the Eucharist as Our Lord asked at the Last Supper. If Church attendances shrink from what they were in January, what will they do next? Oh, and if you wish the Sacrament of Reconciliation, your personal relationship with Christ, also provided at the Last Supper, shouting your failings across a car park may have been replaced by a complicated structure of tapes. instead of the simple process of General Absolution.

It was interesting to find in Wikipedia, under ‘Bishops of Scotland By Name’ so/me very interesting names of Catholic bishops you have certainly never seen in the local Roman Catholic press. Like Bishop Maroon-Nasserof the Maronites, Bishop Kenneth Nopwakowski of the Ukrainians and Bishop Joseph Srampickal of the Syro-Malabars. The last has the largest congregation of all, using a Roman Catholic church in Glasgow. They’re all Catholics, just like you and me, even if without Irish ancestors from Donegal. or even Bengal. We all have the same Pope, and the same Sacraments. They’re all Catholics but not Roman Catholicxs and don’t have to function without the problem of flogging a dead horse. They can go to church and receive the Eucharist without being distracted by wondering if they’re getting it from some pervert. Unlike us.

I am contsantlky stunned to find educated Catholics whom still don’t know that the Church is actually in 24 sections, the Roman Rite and the 23 other sections. No, I mean seriously. Really. Look it up on Wikipedia, ignoring all religious groups ending in ‘x’, unless you want a pointless lifetime hobby The Roman Rite is ours. It’s the one that chases the Flock away. Some of the others are very old. So? One of the most active sections of the Church in Britain- possibly even Glasgow- are the Syro-Malabars. They were founded by St Thomas- that St Thomas, the awkward one . Beat that. You may say- ancient, irrelevant, don’t Twitter- but one of these rites was established as infinitely and incredibly long ago as 2010 by St JPII- and the other in 2015 by Pope Francis.

I am very well aware that there are Jesuits and Jesuits, despite the training. Very well aware. But this is where I feel let down by Pope Francis , even although he has had Cardinal Burke, Cardinal Sarah and above all Pope Doppelganger snapping at his heels. Why can’t he establish more rites, as many as he feels like ? That’s what he’s there for. How about a new rite-the Atlantic Rite, with bishops appointed from the religious orders, and elected ordained parishionsre to provide the Eucharist in an atmosphere free from paedophiles ? Some may be married, you’ll say. I hope so, I definitely say. I also say try to kid a parish as easily as paedophiles have kidded those running seminaries.

Why does the Pope tolerate these old men with funny hats and spectacles who scuttle about trying to resuscitate a defunct method of providing the Eucharist for the Flock ? Why is what is left of the Catholic press still dedicated to helping him? If it’smoney, how much would a Catholic version of ‘Private Eye’ make by putting the boot into those who keep its readers and their children away from the Sacraments simply by still being here ?

Why can’t our prelates justify – finally- their function as shepherds of the Flock by accepting that their present and future can be summed up in three words Do Not Resuscitate?

Why not new rites ? Why not?