Tag Archives: Pope Francis

Must We Have Old Priests Where is it written?

07 Tuesday Nov 2017

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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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Et Tu Bergoglio?(if accurately quoted)

07 Thursday Sep 2017

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Pope Francis is quoted a lot. Possibly therefore he is misquoted a lot. We’re prepared to give him all kinds of leeway. If he’s asked a long question and says ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ , did he necessarily have time to examine the question carefully? We know, we know, we’re on his side.
In March he was extensively quoted on the subject of ‘viri probati’, or ‘approved men’, a concept dreamt up by Emeritus Pope Benedict for keeping control of ordained laymen. Worse still, he was quoted as actually saying’older viri probati’.We have searched the internet diligently , and there are only some references to ‘older’ when this quote is mentioned. So who knows? But just in case, we propose with all due deference and respect, and certainly more than we would give to StJP2or EPBen to lay about us.
If you have and have always had a full-time job in the Vatican, and you are in your late seventies or eighties, we have to put it to you that you have never had anyone say to you ‘Do you know what the hell you’re talking about ?’ (Add being a Jesuit Provincial to Pope Francis’s case). Go quite far down the pecking order and add old Mgr X or old canon XXX (yes him!) in Glasgow. Has it ever happened ? Or have just always confused the clergyman with his function?
Anyway, another time for that, but we have to put the question, fearlessly as ever, to Pope Francis.
‘Probati’? Approved? Approved by whom? We prefer to speak only of the Church in Scotland, beginning with, of course, Cardinal O’Brien , and working our way down the list of pederasts, mistress-keepers and embezzlers who have disfigured its work in recent years. But we will not do so, even if only because this PC is on its last legs. They were all approved. We know nothing personally of , say, the Church in the USA other than what we see in Oscar –winning films, or in Australia /from what we read in best sellers like Thomas Keneally’s latest. We wish we had a German correspondent.
Effective and efficient approval, we will say, has not been a gift given those in the Church whose business, even after six years or so in a seminary, is assessing candidates for the priesthood. A parish is a community, sometimes far flung, sometimes in a city. To regard it simply as a collection of faces beyond the altar rails is a mistake.
The suggestion that a parish would select , among those whom it would choose as being worthy of being Ordained Celebrants , those who are unworthy is a slap in the face to any parish, a vibrant and infinitely complex network of family and social relationships , and frequently uncharitably so assessed. Would any parish choose for election a sexual adventurer, a pederast or an embezzler to represent it? And if some chancer should escape scrutiny, we must remember that 8.5% of the Apostles betrayed Christ Himself.
Approved forsooth, the latter word being one we have always wanted to use.
We are reluctant to believe that Pope Francis said’elderly’.This is where we have to ask even Pope Francis if he knows what he is talking about. It is also a criticism of celibacy, and its failure to provide a life lived among the young.
We find a succession of rhetorical questions incredibly irritating We will simply make a series of statements . If you disagree, you know where we are. We remind you that the average age of members of To Feed The Flock is 80 plus.
Teenagers think anybody over 21 is middle-aged. The expression ’coffin-dodgers’ is widespread, and applicable to anyone over 40. ‘Elderly’ is commonly considered a euphemism for Alzheimer’s. Those between 30 and 40, who have fought the good fight and are still church-going, don’t really know what life is like in 2017. A 70 year old is a dodderer, be he lay or clergyman. Older people have let the Church become what it is today,without challenging Cardinal O’Brien and his like. If an old man can relate to Christ and his teaching, therefore how can he relate to life as a Catholic adolescent? Those who remember Stephen Fry must ask-what would he have said?
All of these ideas help to keep the third lost generation from the Eucharist.
Elderly? Come, come, Pope Francis, if you actually said this.

A Cardinal on Bishops

11 Sunday Sep 2016

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Cardinal Nichols has come up with a couple of good ones, as he sometimes does. You may remember his comment on a spiritual communion as opposed to receiving the Eucharist. The Catholic Herald tells us that this week he remarked ’Governance in the name of Jesus has no trace of the patterns of the world’s ways- lording it over them ,’ emphasising that it ‘ was a call to ‘serve’ If by ‘has no trace’ he meant ‘should have no trace’, his comment , of course, could hardly be more correct. Otherwise it flies in the face of common experience. An embarrassing moment at a recent public meeting in Glasgow was the speaker referring to a bishop in indirect speech as ‘M’lord’.
‘In my humble experience, ordination as a bishop brings with it a more radical change than even the change wrought by ordination’ was another comment. ‘( We wrestle here with the temptation to comment on the word ‘wrought’ as opposed to ‘made’ or ‘created’, but we fight it and move on. )
If he means here that ordination as a bishop takes him in 2016 even farther away from what a Tridentine priest is supposed to be doing , he is absolutely correct. The Tridentine priesthood in 2016 is practically defunct. The episcopacy then, and we must imagine that he refers at least to the British episcopacy here, has no interest in providing the Eucharist.
But we knew that, of course, last November, when the Bishops of England and Wales ignored a suggestion to consider extending ordination, although the Pope had just before allowed this to the Eastern Church.
If this is the ‘radical change’ which he feels is brought by being ordained bishop, i.e a quite deliberate refusal to follow the example of the Pope, it is one to which he is welcome.
One recalls again the observation of a child on seeing the late Princess Margaret at some function, and enquiring loudly, ’But what is that lady FOR?’
One must ask with equal curiosity, what are the bishops of England and Wales FOR in 2016 if not to do what the Pope asks them ? Especially if what he asks them will bring the Eucharist to many more of the Flock?

If the Pope says ‘No’, they’ll have to have another go…

17 Sunday Apr 2016

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Well, he let them down, didn’t he ? No anti-doctrinal sensations from the Popes . And don’t try to tell us that some weren’t hoping for one, impossible though this would have been. Is is possible that some of them were bishops ?
You can just imagine the Sunday afternoon scene in some building that’s still called a palace, with somebody who still likes to be called ‘milord’, by somebody who /still wears the pectoral cross even at home, even if it’s banging off his knees, somebody who’s stalking about the parlour, shouted at his secretary, hoping against hope that someone will come to the door with a reserved sin to get a penance that will turn his hair white and curdle his blood.
They’ll still have to go on listening to the Pope, if only because there is no other reason for their being taken seriously in 2016 , and that of course mostly all their own fault. They’ll feel better next day, and issue orders for the closure of a few more churches or maybe start a vocations campaign, .
But worse than having to listen to him, and having to show it, as congregations decline and the Flock becomes restive, worst of all in fact, is having to do some work, this time in discernment. The days of saying ‘This is what Canon Law says, so there’ are on their last legs. As the Pope says in ‘ The Joy of Love’ :
‘We also find it hard to make room for the consciences of the faithful, who very often respond as best they can to the Gospel amid their limitations, and are capable of carrying out their discernment in complex situations. We have been called to form consciences, not to replace them…A pastor cannot feel that is enough simply to apply moral laws to those living in ‘irregular situations’ as if they were stones to throw at people’s lives’
‘We have been called to form consciences , not to replace them’
Does the Pope, a man bold enough to say ‘Pastors, not Princes’, and we’ve heard a Scottish bishop, although he’d been a bishop for all of nine weeks at the time, tell us what he thought about that, really understand just how much actual WORK this involves ? How much it involves giving up the addictive taste of power?
‘Capable of carrying out their discernment in complex situations’?
Come on, we bishops do that. It’s our thing. After all, we’re celibate, and we can do what we like. And it’s all been such fun. How can THEY possibly do that?
We have a sudden flashback here to days of being stooped in front of a high chair , picking bits of violently discarded food out of our clothes, and saying to a trembling upper lip, ‘Eat it, it will do you good ‘. Can’t bishops see, given their perspective of more or less unlimited power, that supporting Pope Francis by adopting the extension of ordination actually gives them power beyond their wildest dreams, and hundreds of thousands of new Ordained Celebrants to control?
How, you may well ask, did bishops get this way? One of the answers is how they were appointed, and the Congregation of Bishops did this. Their numbers at one point included Cardinal Bernard Francis Law, still listed on 4th April 2013, at 11.27 a.m. Yes, him. This body obviously jumped through the hoops provided by St John Paul II, the Platonic Relationship Pope , during his lengthy reign. If you said what he liked, you were appointed. We have assessed the price of sending a 2016 calendar to each of the world’s bishops, in case they haven’t got one, but the price is prohibitive.
While anybody still cares, we suggest that the bishops smarten up.
This is now 2016. Accept it, or do the honourable thing.

Aye, aye,Sir? No, No,Sir !

05 Sunday Jul 2015

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Stirring times in Glasgow last week! In the Archdiocesan newspaper, ‘Flourish’, Archbishop Tartaglia shared with us “my thoughts on where I think we are” in planning future parish provision. Essentially, there were “Where are the people ? “ and “How many priest and deacons will there be ? ”
He also mentioned that a new auxiliary Bishop would be appointed.
The newspaper was probably printed too early for him to mention the plea of guilty to three sexual assaults on young people accepted by one of the finest preachers in the Archdiocese.
Now there are less appealing bishops than Archbishop Tartaglia , and unlike other Archbishops in Scotland he’s prepared to at least acknowledge a letter. But what an unfortunate series of events.
We do try to avoid cliché, but the rearrangement of deckchairs on the ‘Titanic’ can hardly be avoided now, can it?
Very few people have ever been killed or injured in fights at the back of our churches here in Glasgow to get the latest edition of ‘Flourish’ . So it’s fair to assume he’s talking to churchgoers.
Imagine if you will, the captain of the ‘Titanic’ talking in a not yet invented tannoy to those in the lifeboats. In the article, Archbishop Tartaglia is speaking in geographical terms of the city when he asks ‘Where are the people?’. Those of us in the lifeboats know from our own families , and at least two generations within them, where the people are. They are no longer in church. They are drifting silently away from the Church into the darkness, like the lifejacketed victims in the famous ‘Titanic’ film to a very different life without the Sacraments from the one they were baptised into. Unlike the original, there are many lifeboats- or parishes, if you are still with me- without seamen to control them, who could save those still aboard. The Captain- still Archbishop Tartaglia- says he hopes to find , and I quote, ’suitable priests from wherever’, the missing seamen .
My Jesuit former English teacher used to suggest that we run the other way if we saw an extended metaphor approaching, but bear with us. In 2015, to ignore Pope Francis’s offer to extend ordination, as he has done with the Eastern Rite, is for the captain of the ‘Titanic’ to tell all sorts of rescue ships not to bother, we’ll be fine. Why can’t the bishops accept his offer to extend ordination and give us the duly Ordained Ministers , from our parishes, who would provide the Eucharist to the Flock ? And in particular why can’t British bishops? The Scottish ones certainly owe us. Do we really need to hope , however improbably unlikely this is, for the miraculous provision of ‘suitable priests from wherever’?
This extended metaphor thing is quite addictive. We now see what Fr John Tracy, SJ meant. But bear with us one last time, for two last points , as he would have said.
How would those in the lifeboats have responded to this tannoy announcement, as the ship descended into the depths, to the news that the ship had a new First Lieutenant, other than by detaching removable parts from the lifeboats and trying to throw them at the Captain ? We feel that the announcement of a new auxiliary Bishop for Glasgow is equally irrelevant.
Finally, but far more significantly than the Church in Scotland seems to feel is relevant, what if the Captain had had to mention that one of his most trusted seamen had played an active part in trying to scuttle the ship , as regrettably one of the finest preachers in the Archdiocese has done ?
We have now abandoned the Titanic metaphor, you may be pleased to note.
We simply ask- why don’t our bishops abandon the notion that the Tridentine priest is , in general, the only method of providing the Eucharist for the Flock , and extend ordination as Pope Francis has asked them to consider ?

Bishop Leo O’Reilly, June 11th 2015

15 Monday Jun 2015

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The Bishop of Kilmore, Bishop Leo O’Reilly, it is reported in the ‘Catholic Herald ‘ of 11th June 2015, has urged his colleagues to establish a commission to discuss the possibility of ordain9ing married men. It is hoped that the proposal will be discussed at the next meeting of the bishops’ conference in October.

Bishop O’Reilly said :
‘Pope Francis has encouraged individual bishops and bishops’ conferences to be creative in looking at ways to do ministry in the future, so I think we have to consider all options.’

The Scottish Bishops Is it Deja Vu once more ?

10 Sunday May 2015

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We noted recently that Pope Francis said he wasn’t feeling too good. Well, we all know the feeling
The “Letter from Rome “ in this week’s “Tablet “,quotes a member of the Italian bishops’ conference , which we take the liberty of quoting in turn. “There is a kind of clerical magma, lying passively underground, waiting to see in which direction the wind will blow.” The author adds “To put it brutally, these are willing time to pass quickly, and looking forward to seeing who will be next to occupy the Chair of Peter”. Next day we came across the details of yet another dreadful Scottish clerical scandal from 2012, thanks, of course, only to the files of a local newspaper, which we had unaccountably missed.
Next time the Chair is vacant , we can visualise three possibilities. First, a “pope of transition”, hopefully however with the guts of Emeritus Pope Benedict. Secondly, another John Paul II . We’ll leave it at that, but definitely a champagne party for the bishops. Thirdly, an even more dynamic Pope than Pope Francis, who could easily , if he felt like it, and overnight at that by email, order all bishops over 45 to resign immediately to ensure that ordination would be extended and the Eucharist provided for thousands.
Some would cry “schism !” It wouldn’t be, of course. The only schism would be if the bishops refused to go, as the Catholic Catechism tells us .
One speculates as to how this would affect the Church in Scotland . Would anyone really be distressed except possibly a few of the rapidly shrinking oldest generation of Catholics ? The other two generations might well see such a change as a very badly needed transfusion of new blood . That is, if they have not been turned off completely by now.
The care taken to ensure that children and grandchildren receive the first four Sacraments suggests that these battered and bruised generations are doggedly determined to ensure that Catholicism in Scotland continues.
A nightmare scenario for apparently all but the Scottish bishops , however, would be if they have been turned off completely. In police argot, Scottish bishops have form in their persistent refusal to pay attention to the needs and concerns of their flocks. We draw the attention of the Scottish episcopate to the historical notes in the annual handbook “The Western Catholic Calendar : “ There were few countries in the 16th century religious reformation in which the eclipse of the Catholic Church seemed so quickly accomplished and so totally effective as in Scotland”.
Well, it makes you think. Catholics in Scotland in 2015, are like Catholics everywhere else hanging on despite enormous pressure from secularism and changing values, but unlike Catholics everywhere operating in a grand guignol scenario in which the only response from their bishops is silence, and a refusal to listen to the Pope’s offers to extend ordination .
It makes you think. Will it make Scottish bishops think before, possibly, it is too late?

Vocations Sunday? Oh, come on !

26 Sunday Apr 2015

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We’ve lost touch with how precisely Vocations Sundays pastoral letters, etc, target candidates, largely due to trying to keep a straight face, it must be said. The Archdiocese of Glasgow has 2 students in Rome, and two mothballed seminaries. Pope Francis, like all really clever Jesuits, can say what he wants to without actually saying it. As readers of this blog may just be aware, he has offered on several occasions to reassess the status of the secular priest, as well as having actually changed it for the Eastern Church in January. We think it fair to say therefore that To Feed The Flock and Pope Francis are united in not expecting prayers for vocations to result in hundreds suddenly queuing up anywhere to join secular priest seminaries in August 2015. Without attempting to sound Apocalyptic, we assure you, given the statutory five or six year clerical education , the spiritual apathy of Europe and its response to the march of aggressive Islam, it is too late for that.
Instead Pope Francis pointed us last week to vocation as “an attitude of conversion and transformation, an incessant moving forward, a passage from death to life like that celebrated in every liturgy, an experience of Passover”. The journey, he points out is God’s work as “He leads us beyond our initial situation, frees us from every enslavement, breaks down our habits and our indifference and brings us to the joy of communion with Him and with our brothers and sisters.”
Does he possibly suggest here that the “conversion and transformation” of vocation could be extended beyond ordination to the episcopacy, to accepting the necessity of change ?
When will the Church’s bishops accept that it is no longer possible, or right, or ultimately Christian to deny the Eucharist to so many hundreds of thousands of the faithful unless through the medium of a celibate and parish supported priesthood ?

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Dr. Francis and his Diagnosis

28 Sunday Dec 2014

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The highlight of the year must be Pope Francis’s diagnosis of the problems of the Curia
– especially, possibly, pointing out to it that it has problems.
Anybody who has ever worked in a large institution- especially an old large institution-
must have had a wonderful time pinning his comments to individuals ,
occasions and tendencies they immediately recognised.

Some have wondered if he was being unkind.
Others have wondered why some of his predecessors didn’t exercise
similar managerial input.
Very cynical others may feel this was because this suited them .
The point is that the Pope is the Manager. And he is Managing !
That’s what he’s there for.

The Catholic press is of course in limbo- if you’ll pardon the expression –
at this time , with Christmas Numbers all prepared weeks ago.
But it will, of course- well, it will, won’t it ?
– no, surely it will- give us all the details in the next few weeks.
( And if it doesn’t, why not ? But later, later)
For the benefit if those who couldn’t get all the details from the media
– after all, an associate of the Beatles died on the same day, and was no. 2 on the BBC News-
but we can provide the headings.
The “Washington Post” website provided all of these on Google,
with supporting quotations from the Pope’s actual speech.

(1) “the sickness of considering oneself immortal, immune or indispensable”
(2) “Marthaism or excessive industriousness”
(3) “the sickness of mental and spiritual hardening”
(4)“the ailment of excessive planning and functionalism”
(5 “the sickness of poor coordination”
(6) “Spiritual Alzheimer’s Disease”
(7) “the ailment of rivalry and vainglory”
(8) “existential schizophrenia” (the most brilliant insight of all for Catholics, we think)
(9) “chatter, grumbling and gossip”
(10) “the sickness of deifying leaders”
(11) “the disease of indifference towards others”
(12) “the illness of the funereal face”
(13) “the disease of accumulation”
(14) “the ailment of closed circles”
(15) “the disease of worldly profit and exhibitionism”
This masterly analysis of the mechanics of any neglected and ageing institution
must not be regarded as mere Curia-bashing.
In fact, it ranks with the work of Janis on the psychological mechanism of a group,
recently mentioned here,as a milestone in psychological and managerial nsight.
(With extra insight added into the spiritual dimension which the Curia must acknowledge
it possesses)
Now- if you work in such an institution- don’t mention even to yourself
the names which spring to mind. It is Christmas, after all !

At last- a Pope who realises that we are out here !

That was the highlight.
Now,it is the custom for publications at this time of the year to have a comic or
humorous section.
So, we’ll mention that we had here a Bishop publicly not being very amused by Francis’s
preference for pastors and not princes. No, seriously!
Before far too polite an audience. He did!
It’s an interesting attitude the more you think about it .
Still, that was nearly a year ago, to be fair.

We wish you belated Christmas greetings, having abandoned our last blog
in mid-harangue after Francis’s remarks.
We hope you all received nice Christmas gifts, certainly none better than
the gift we all received in March 2013.