Abp (des) McMahon: 2.913 Cheers

.
In the circumstances, I can't see how the translation of Bishop McMahon to Liverpool can be seen as anything other than good news.  Not very great news, because there has obviously been a decision to translate within England and Wales rather than find somebody completely new: but of those available, we, and Liverpool (remember this matters to the archdiocese more than it matters to the rest of us) should be glad that the Pope, on the advice of the Nuncio and of the Cardinal, has chosen a Bishop who is not part of the Magic Circle, the apparatus whose stranglehold on the Church in England and Wales I believe the Cardinal has been weakening since he arrived at Westminster.

I'm not too worried about the new Archbishop's willingness to celebrate Tridentine Masses, though it will be an encouragement to a lot of people whose priests have implacably opposed it, or his politics, because for a Dominican of his generation he is probably as untarnished by the 80s as it is possible to be.  I'm really pleased that he is Catholic, intellectually capable, not afraid of engagement with the public sphere; a Bishop, rather than the manager of a diocese, and one who appreciates the importance of the Liturgy.

He isn't perfect: neither am I, nor, I dare to venture, are you.  But let us offer our prayers for his ministry, and hope that for Merseyside, the Isle of Man, South Lancs, and Salford irredenta, and by extension, for the rest of us, he can turn his cathedra into a Northern powerhouse of Catholic regeneration.
.