After a pause caused by house selling , we hasten back to assure you that the person holding a card with an offensive comment about the Pope at a darts competition in Glasgow which was on television is not immediately identifiable. It’s just a kind of local thing , and not just the kind of anti-Francis stuff which is so brilliantly described in the current edition of La Croix International, which we have just discovered on the net, and can strongly recommend . We’re quite used to this here , and can now almost see it as a kind of folk festival.
The man of the moment is again Bishop Krautler of Brazil. Now retired as bishop, he is still as active as ever , motivated by the simple fact that 90% of his former flock cannot receive the Eucharist , because of the shortage of Tridentine priests. This interest does not make him unique among bishops- the bishops in Indonesia, for instance, have been complaining about this for years- but it certainly makes him an unusual figure among the rest of the bishops world-wide who were asked to present possible schemes for the ordination of parishioners to ensure that the Flock receives the Eucharist In other words, he is still trying to do something about it. Yes, about making sure that people receive the Eucharist , as Christ asked.
He reminds us of Bishop Fritz Lobinger of South Africa, who some years ago suggested that priests be ordained from parishes without seminary education, for the simple purpose of providing the Eucharist. We had not come across Bishop Lobinger before we started this blog . All we say is- well there you are now. It’s not just us. We are prepared to accept that it is not just great minds which think alike, but anybody with common sense.
In one version of his recent statements , however, there has been attached to his comments, the idea of viri probati . We doubt if he meant by this the idea that the ordination of some elderly parishioner in place of some elderly Tridentine priest is going to lead to a storming of our churches by age-obsessed teenagers .
We know teenagers. You know teenagers. If it didn’t happen last Thursday, and it wasn’t on their phones, it could not have happened. This is not a criticism , we hasten to add, all of us having teenage relations. It’s a thing they’re stuck with . It’s the intellectual equivalent of the Black Death. But apart from that, they are always going to have to live with the cultural phenomenon that has made, is making, and will continue to make the Tridentine priest a possible or previous or future paedophile. It is a cultural fact, happening, event. Or milestone
What is this viri probati nonsense all about? We have an idea, but it’s not for this blog. Away back when , before television, priests were ordained all over the world usually on the Feast of Sts Peter and Paul . Thousands of them ! And they were all about 25! Yes, 25! Young men, and warmly welcomed despite that dreadful handicap of being young and living in the present century and with at least a rough idea of what life was about for teenagers, despite their seminary education.
Why not now? Why not ordain in a parish a taxi driver or a newsagent or a supermarket assistant manager, somebody they know who can bring them the Eucharist without all the horrendous baggage of association with the paedophile scandals and their cover up ?
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