How Did We Get Here (Part Three And Final)

And it is here that I shall home back in on my starting point: how was the Bishops’ Conference to be structured, and what role would what lay people play in it?  Here is the section on Conference and Diocese.  I don’t apologise for quoting at length.

“112. The sense of sharing in the life and mission of the Church comes from our understanding of baptism as the means through which we are drawn mystically into Christ's body and are formed thereby into a community.  Rooted in Christ we are set free to live and work together in a loving, confident partnership.  We are truly incorporated into a body which is living and growing, a community marked by love, care, acceptance and respect. This community of faith is Christ-centred through its worship, teaching and service.  At its heart is the living presence of Jesus Christ in the eucharist.  And the eucharist both celebrates and forms the community: at the same time it both expresses and creates the Church.  It gives the community a missionary purpose.  Each local Church, each diocese, deanery and parish is a living expression of God's people.

113. The Second Vatican Council, in its Decree on the Bishops' Pastoral Office n. 36, recalled that “from the earliest ages of the Church, bishops in charge of particular churches, inspired by a spirit of fraternal charity and by zeal for the universal mission entrusted to the apostles, have pooled their resources and their aspirations in order to promote both the common good and the good of individual churches”.  But although this relationship of mutual help was long established, until recently relatively few countries had formalised the relationship in a Bishops' Conference, with statutes recognised by the Holy See as a basis for its exercising juridical power in certain circumstances.  The establishment of our Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, which was formally recognised in January 1967, was a natural consequence of this grant of juridical status, but in many ways its concern has been primarily with pastoral affairs.  To that time meetings of the Hierarchy of England and Wales were no more than opportunities for consultation between individual local Ordinaries who might or might not agree a common policy in administering their own dioceses.  The Bishops' Conference, as now established, is a nice balance between on the one hand adequate responsibility and initiative for the local bishop's pastoral care for his diocese, and on the other hand his collegial responsibility for the mission of the universal Church and especially for the good of the territory or country of which his diocese is only part.  Strictly a national Church as such does not exist: there must be respect for the reasonable autonomy of a diocese, and for this there is a strong theological as well as historical basis.  Nevertheless a national group of dioceses, if not exactly a national Church, is a reality. It responds to the needs of a particular nation or territory; it relates to the Holy See with regard to the Church in that nation and it can take certain national initiatives. The National Pastoral Congress was a good example of this.

114. The scope of our Bishops' Conference is explicitly drawn from the Council's decree we have just mentioned:  “An Episcopal Conference is a kind of council in which bishops of a given nation or territory jointly exercise their pastoral office by way of promoting that greater good which the Church offers mankind especially through forms and programmes of the apostolate which are fittingly adapted to the circumstances of the age” (Christus Dominus, n. 38, 1).  The Conference possesses detailed statutes regarding its structure and procedures, and it makes provision also for “episcopal commissions, consisting of bishops and experts”, who, in accordance with the powers granted to them, assist the Conference in the fulfilment of its functions”. These commissions are of an advisory or consultative nature, each with a bishop as its president or chairman, and with a membership which is drawn from among clergy, religious and laity. “To ensure that the basis of the advice offered should be reasonably comprehensive, membership of each commission should be widely-drawn and varied in age-range and experience. But its task is essentially to offer advice to the bishops and to assist the Church through the Conference in the various fields of the Church's mission for which responsibility is shared but in which the bishops as a body have a particular ministry to fulfil'” (Review Committee Report, 1971, n. 8).

115. We welcome this opportunity to place on record our gratitude to the laity, clergy and religious who in the past thirteen years have served on these commissions and have given our Conference and the Church in this country able and generous assistance.  The needs of society and the challenges facing the Church change constantly.  From time to time it is necessary for us to review both the procedures of our Conference and the structure and work of its constituent commissions.   For example, in an earlier section of this Message we have indicated that, if we are to work more closely with the British Council of Churches, it will be necessary for us to review our commission structure to make sure that there is no unnecessary duplication or wastage of our resources.  At such a time it may well be desirable to consider the establishment of a commission to advise specifically about pastoral concerns and developments, including the implementation of certain policy recommendations in this Message.  This would provide for the co-ordination of experience and possibly of resources, but not as an interference in the proper responsibilities and local initiatives of individual dioceses.  But for the immediate future, save where we have indicated that we are taking direct action ourselves, the follow-up to the Congress lies definitely within the responsibility of the dioceses, aided locally, we hope, by the religious orders, by lay organisations and other apostolic groups and of course by the delegates themselves.

116. We have already referred to the statement by the Council Fathers that “a diocese constitutes a particular Church in which the one holy, catholic and apostolic Church of Christ is truly present and active” (Christus Dominus, n. 11).  Each diocese is therefore a community of faith called to fulfil the life and mission of God's people in an effective way. Its capacity to realise its worshipping, sanctifying, missionary and pastoral purpose, within the total mission of the universal Church, is the primary consideration in assessing its viability. In 1974 a working party established by the Bishops' Conference produced a report entitled Ground-Plan.  This was published as a consultative document to guide those concerned with the possible re-organisation and re-division of the dioceses of England and Wales. Certain principles were offered; since then two new dioceses have been established and proposals for two others were, after consultation, set aside.  Other developments will doubtless be carried through in the future.

117. It is generally agreed that a diocese must be an effective pastoral “unit”. Yet that very description implies something rather impersonal, whereas there is an increasing awareness of a diocese as a community of the faithful people of God, led by a bishop able to make suitable provision for their spiritual and pastoral needs. It is not just a convenient geographical unit with appropriate numbers.  Great importance is rightly attached to the mutual sense of “belonging” between pastors and people.  Clearly the numbers who can be known to a bishop and who can know him are limited but the real criterion is the bishop's capacity, with and through his collaborators to provide for his priests and people a leadership and service suited to their purpose as a ”particular” Church. The service required is bound to vary with the nature of the diocese, its social and cultural needs, its rural or urban situation.

118. Diocesan development remains under constant review. In the meantime certain valuable experiences are being gained from discovering the relative advantages of the creation of new smaller dioceses (at a time when the overall number of priests is still falling), the use of area bishops acting as a team under the leadership of the bishop of the whole diocese, and the system of episcopal vicars, not themselves necessarily bishops but exercising ordinary jurisdiction in their various spheres of responsibility.  It seems unlikely that any one solution will necessarily serve every part of our countries.  The important consideration remains the effective spiritual and pastoral collaboration of the bishop with the laity, clergy and religious of the diocese in their life and purpose as a community of faith.”

You might think that the story ends here but there is one last story to tell.  One of the promises made to the members of the NPC by the Cardinal in his final sermon was that “in loyalty and obedience we shall lay before him our hopes and anxieties” – “him” in this case, meant the Holy Father, Pope John Paul.  The opportunity to do same came shortly afterwards: Archbishops Hume and Worlock were elected by the Bishops’ Conference to be their representatives at the European Synod of Bishops, and off they went, with Father “Vin” Nichols, who had chaired one of the NPC groups, as Worlock’s assistant.

The Archbishops presented a copy of the conclusions of the NPC to Pope John Paul II either open on the page demanding access to contraception or not, depending on who was telling the story to whom, only for it to be completely ignored by the Pope (whether contemptuously or not again depends on who was telling the story to whom).  The two Archbishops then tried to sell both the NPC view on contraception and its view on the admittance of divorced Catholics to the sacraments to the Synod: they were heard politely and ignored: the 1980 Synod marked the point at which John Paul II’s putting an end to the “spirit of Vatican II” began to become Church policy again after a decade of doctrinal anarchy.

It should also be noted that to their great and lasting credit, two English Bishops, Holland of Salford, and Lindsay of Hexham and Newcastle, denounced in The Universe what they saw as a misrepresentation of the views of the Bishops of England and Wales by Hume and Worlock in Rome.
On their return, they found themselves greeted with a communication from the National Council of Priests, welcoming The Easter People but disappointed that Hume and Worlock had not pressed the case for it sufficiently at the Synod for it to have been adopted by the Church at large.  Mgr David Norris, Secretary of the Bishops’ Conference wrote a note of the meeting, which included an extraordinarily candid section about the Synod: 

“The Declaration accepted wholeheartedly the findings of the National Pastoral Congress and welcomed the bishops' message The Easter People.  However, the National Conference had some problems with the bishops' message for they felt that the bishops had moved away from some of the resolutions of the Congress.  The bishops appeared to give up their right as a local Church and to be too willing to give way to the Roman Curia.

The Cardinal replied that he considered that conservatism was succeeding in many parts of the world and was also rising in Rome.  We had to remember that Western Europe was now a minority in the Church and places like Africa and South America were very conservative.  Our local church has to find its way in the present circumstances and it is not always clear how it should proceed.
The Cardinal was sure that it would not help to have public calls on our bishops to act by themselves. 
There were some conservatives in this country who were already attacking what had already been done by himself and Archbishop Worlock.

The Archbishop was more optimistic - he compared the Synod with the last Council - then the minority had proposed renewal and had managed to become the majority by the end of the Council.  Now there had been a change during the four weeks of the Synod, though perhaps not a full acceptance of the minority view.  The Pope, too, had attended all the plenary sessions and had made no attempt to interfere with the freedom of those taking part.  In his closing speech, the Pope had not closed the door and had in fact welcomed the propositions.  Nor had he rejected the famous law of gradualness; what he had condemned was a graded law."

Hume and Worlock made sure that this record of their meeting was suppressed – in fact it was not published until 2000.  But it shows that the decision had been made to trim: to appear outwardly as loyal as any other Conference, while doggedly pursuing as much of the NPC/Easter People agenda as could be got away with.

I thought, the first time I showed a friend this piece in draft that the awfulness of what happened on the return from Rome spoke for itself, but it didn’t.  I forget how much time has passed, how many things have happened.  By avoiding a fight over the poster issues, Hume and Worlock got away with much more.

The Hierarchies in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, the US and Holland had picked a fight with the Vatican over the “spirit of Vatican II”.  All lost, though the losses to the Church in those countries were grievous.  Hume, the smooth Prince of the Church, and Worlock, the outstanding apparatchik, made sure that didn’t happen in England and Wales.  Instead, they invited the Pope to come on a pastoral visit, and allowed the schmaltzy side of British ultramontanism temporarily to seem to take over while, with the help of successive complaisant Nuncios, the plan took root and took hold as the old Bishops were succeeded by priests who were “on message”.

And it is all of this which, for the last thirty years, has governed the way the Church in England and Wales has been run.  A sympathetic Nunciature has made sure that the agenda has been advanced: it hasn’t changed.   Look, for example, at the stranglehold on liturgical music by a tiny coterie of activist laypeople.  Look at the way that Catholic schools stopped preparing children for First Confession and First Holy Communion so that the catechesis could take place in parishes, run by lay people.  Look at the multiplicity of lay “ministries” in the Church.

And understand why the Internet is such a threat.  Understand that there are Catholic voices which belong to many people who are finding them and using them, and understand that losing control, as the regimes in Eastern Europe lost control in 1989, or as regimes in the Middle East and North Africa lost control in 2010, and you may begin to understand why the pathological hatred of any manifestation of “unofficial” Catholicism is so manifest today.

Maybe, as so often, Chesterton was looking close to home as well as more widely:

“We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet,
Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street.
It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first,
Our wrath come after Russia's wrath and our wrath be the worst.
It may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our rest
God's scorn for all men governing. It may be beer is best.
But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.”

How Did We Get Here (Part Two)

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You are probably expecting me to say that the NPC voted through a set of propositions along the lines mentioned in part one above which the Bishops then ratified: in fact the story gets even more complicated.  The activist laity voted through a set of propositions too radical even for the Bishops, but the Bishops used what the laity asked for to create a set of structures which kept the Vatican from interfering in the Church in England and Wales for the rest of the Pontificate of John Paul II and which reinforced and solidified the hold of the activists on the whole of Catholic life.

Delegates were chosen by a complicated process, based on each diocese sending one delegate per 1000 of its normal Sunday Mass attendance, along with representatives of Catholic national organisations, HM Forces, universities, seminaries, religious orders, the commissions (?), the Prison Service, ethnic groups, and “a limited number of Catholics chosen because of their expertise, but whose national secular duties would normally exclude them from being chosen as members of diocesan delegations”.  The main criterion, however, was people who were able to spend a period of Friday to Tuesday at the NPC: not the sort of thing your average Catholic would want to do, or would be able to do.  The organisers prided themselves on choosing a bank holiday weekend, so those attending would only have to ask for two days off work: but how many people at that time had that degree of flexibility?  And how many housewives (there were rather more of them then than now) would be able to leave husband and children for such an extended period?  The activists, who would dominate anyway, would be predominantly middle class, articulate, and with agendas that reflected where they were in the world.

The Bishops were few in number, but the Council was not binding on them.  They were being manoeuvred by Hume and Worlock (and their agents) into a position where the cost to them of rejecting the most extreme propositions the Congress would propose would be the acceptance of limitations to their autonomy by the creation of stronger structures within the Episcopal Conference and a greater role for lay activists within these structures.

The losers- the squeezed middle - were the priests.  Both the Bishops and the lay members of the Congress treated them as though they were lay people with a special role something less than a Bishop's.  The role of the priest was to be eclipsed by the role of the activist lay person, without the Bishops surrendering any of their authority and independence downward.  The National Council of Priests, which would anyway be diminished by the shrinkage in the number of priests and the consequent need for more and more of them to have to be full time PPs rather than have the luxury of chaplaincies, special ministries and extended sabbaticals, gradually faded from the scene.

And so the Congress.  Seven themes were chosen, and within each of those themes a series of topics. 

The seven major themes for the agenda were: The People of God - Co-responsibility and Relationships; The People of God - Ministry, Vocation, Apostolate; Family and Society; Evangelisation; Christian Education and Formation; Christian Witness; Justice

Each theme was discussed in a separate sector of the Congress and in each sector there were approximately 300 delegates. But each item was itself divided into four or five topics or aspects: so for each topic group there were approximately 60 delegates. These 60 delegates were themselves to be divided into discussion groups of 12-15 delegates for preliminary work on each topic. The headings of the full agenda, with the topic titles, were as follows:

THEME A: PEOPLE OF GOD (i) Co -responsibility and Relationships
The Worshipping Community
The local Church: diocese, deanery, parish, basic communities, prayer groups
Co-responsibility and Consultation
Promotion of Christian Unity
Christian Stewardship and Church Finances

THEME B: PEOPLE OF GOD (ii) Ministry, Vocation, Apostolate
The Ordained Ministries: episcopate, priesthood, diaconate
The Community and Other Ministries
The Religious Life
The Apostolate of the Laity
The Role of Women

THEME C: FAMILY AND SOCIETY
Christian Marriage and the Family
Single People
Old People
Young People
Special Groups: disabled, immigrants, seafarers, non-Christians

THEME D: EVANGELISATION
At Home: the work of conversion
Missionary Activity Overseas
Funding and Sharing in Mission
World Development

THEME E: CHRISTIAN EDUCATION AND FORMATION
Parish Catechesis
Schools (including school liturgy)
Tertiary Education and Academic Life
Adult Education and Sacramental Living

THEME F: CHRISTIAN WITNESS
World of Work
Urban and Rural Life
Public and Civic Life
Communications

THEME G: JUSTICE
Human Rights
Racial Justice
International Peace
Prisoners

The obvious problem was that the division of delegates into such small groups would lead to fragmentation, so members of the Congress committee were not boarded out with families, as the delegates were, but were housed separately in Christ College, specifically so that they could consult before and after each day’s work.  Delegates were kept informed by means of a Congress newspaper.  A complex procedural system of voting, reporting back, drafting, considering drafts and reporting to Congress ensured that the final papers presented accurately reflected the way in which the activists present had been able to gather support for their vision of a new sort of Catholic Church in England and Wales, and in which the committee chose to present it.

This story is long enough already: I am not going to go through the reports on each of the subjects under discussion: they are depressingly predictable.  Much more interesting is the manner in which the Hierarchy used the results of the Congress, and how this played against a changing Church in which John Paul II was getting control in the Vatican, and the “spirit of Vatican II” was beginning to be reined in.

Key to understanding the sleight of hand that was to follow the NPC is the Cardinal’s Homily at the final Mass, which he preached at the Metropolitan Cathedral on 6 May 1980.  I won’t reproduce the whole thing, just some key sections:

“So the pilgrim Church of England and Wales has paused for a moment on its journey through history, and assembled here.  Our purpose has been to see whether or not we are on the right way, to discover, that is, whether we are truly disciples and followers of Jesus Christ, our Lord and our Saviour.  We felt, too, the need to examine many aspects of our Christian lives to ensure that we are in fact living in accordance with the truth that comes from the Gospel.

Indeed this Congress has been the prototype of what should take place in each of our parishes - it is the building of true community witnessing to the risen Christ always in our midst.   Our problem is to know how we can communicate to our families and parishes the spirit and atmosphere of these days, and how to awaken in the Catholic community a concern for the issues which have formed our Congress agenda.  Time for reflection and prayer are needed, but action cannot be delayed.

The Church is community; it is the people of God, the Body of Christ, the living Temple in which the Holy Spirit dwells.  Within that community each one of us has a role to play and a contribution to make.  Christ, our Lord, requires the laity to play an active and full part in the life of the Church under the leadership of their bishops, and this in virtue of the baptism they have received.  You, the laity, must share your insights with us, your bishops and priests, and you must collaborate in the apostolate.  And what riches you have brought to this Congress, and how much we, your pastors, need to listen to ‘the Spirit of truth, who directs the hearts of the faithful’, for this, the ‘sensus fidelium’, is necessary as we explore together the mystery of God and of his unfolding and developing plan for us, his sons and daughters.

We remind ourselves that we must all acknowledge the divine authority given by the Lord himself to him who is the successor of Peter.  It was with joy that we received the messages from the Holy Father, and to know that he had welcomed and blessed our Congress.  In loyalty and obedience we shall lay before him our hopes and anxieties.”

In his homily, Hume has turned the NPC from being the work of a few self-selecting people representative, not of the Church in England and Wales, but of a group of core activists, into the sensus fidelium: they have become the voice of the whole Church.  Not only that, but, under the leadership of the bishops, the role of the laity is to do more.  The final paragraph quoted here is important: we shall see why presently.

It is interesting to note that for a period Archbishop Heim was ill, and while he had been very supportive of the NPC, his deputy at the Apostolic Delegation in Wimbledon, Monsignor Mario Oliveri, was deeply suspicious.  While Heim was away ill, he allowed himself to become a channel through which Catholics outside of the NPC fold could denounce the Congress to the Vatican.  One paper he for¬warded was headed “REASONS WHY THE NATIONAL PASTORAI. CONGRESS OUGHT TO BE STOPPED”, and another complained that the Congress delegates “appeared to be drawn, on the whole, from either those holding progressive views or from amongst those who know little or nothing about the nature of the Church”.

Heim’s illness, though, was shortlived, and on his return to Wimbledon a process to reverse the damge began.  Various Bishops organized a letter writing campaign in support of the Congress, asking the Nunciature to ensure that the letters were forwarded to the Holy See.  By July 1980, Heim was apologizing to Worlock: “I am sorry about all this trouble which has arisen during my absence.  I believe that Rome is now properly informed and that any damage has been undone.”

Worlock had a dual role after the Congress: he was responsible for writing its official report, and was also responsible for arranging the drafting of the Bishops’ response to it.  (I write sentences, sometimes, and have to stop myself, reread what I have written, and confirm to myself that what I have written was really what happened.)  It is probably no surprise that both the official report, and the draft response, which sailed through the Bishops’ Conference, with barely an amendment, and was published as The Easter People, accorded so well with Worlock’s vision.

How Did We Get Here (Part One)

Somewhere deep inside one of the many boxes of books in the attic and the garage whose contents won’t fit on the shelves of this house is an interesting manual from the 1930s: it is a year’s worth of notes for a lecturer training men who want to be public apologists in the Catholic Evidence Guild.  What struck me most about the course was that it was integrated: it wasn’t just scholastic theology (though it is of its time), but ecclesiology and history, the social values of Rerum Novarum, as well as how actually to speak in public.  It mission was “to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the teachings of the Catholic Church to the public”.


According to its website Catholic Voices “began with a single aim: to ensure that Catholics and the Church were well represented in the media when Pope Benedict came to the UK in September 2010. Inspired by that visit, it has become much more: a school of a new Christian humanism; and a laboratory of a new kind of apologetics.”


It was while witnessing a spat recently between a Catholic Voice and a Catholic voice, between a member of the official organisation, and a lone Catholic who isn’t part of any national organisation that I began to wonder exactly why and how the Church in England and Wales has changed so much in my lifetime.


My theme is that between these two dates something changed irrevocably in the Catholic Church in England and Wales and that the change in the nature of the public lay apostolate marks exactly what the difference is.  I will go further: I think we can date exactly the point at which the Church in E&W set off in a new direction, guided by a core of activist Bishops, activist priests and activist laity, all of whom shared a vision of the post-Vatican II Church which was not shared by the largest part of Catholics in England and Wales, nor by the Church at large, as represented by the worldwide Synod of Bishops, or by the Pope; a core which made its own trade-offs and compromises to ensure a united front which has lasted to this day, but which, thanks to the Internet and the pontificate of Benedict XVI is finally beginning to collapse into the wreckage caused by its failure.  From 2-6 May 1980 a “National Pastoral Congress” (henceforth NPC) met in Liverpool; its report was answered by a response from the Bishops’ Conference, The Easter People, which was published on 19 August 1980.  This is where it all went wrong.


It is no longer news that Cardinal Heenan encouraged lay people to write to the Apostolic Nuncio, Archbishop Bruno Heim, to suggest his successor in Westminster in order to ensure that Bishop Worlock of Portsmouth should not get the job. Like most of the Bishops of England and Wales, Heenan detested Worlock for being an apparatchik and, in his attitude to the Council, a turncoat. Worlock had gone to Rome for Vatican II as Cardinal Godfrey’s secretary and a typically conservative English churchman. He had returned with much more experience of pulling ecclesiastical levers and, having seen the writing on the wall, imbued with the “spirit of Vatican II”. His control of various committees, for example his Presidency of the Laity Commission, made him look an unstoppable candidate. It was well known that Heim was as keen as Worlock to rebuild the Church in England and Wales in the “spirit of Vatican II”, and there were no other Bishops in England and Wales who were believed to be sufficiently progressive and sufficiently capable of taking on the job, not least because the obvious candidate on paper, Archbishop Dwyer of Birmingham, declared himself too old to take the job on.

There existed – there probably exists to this day – a National Council of Priests. In the post Humanae Vitae turmoil, it had become a powerful lobby group, equal in its way to the Hierarchy and the laity (does it sound as though the Church was trying to emulate the Anglican arrangement?) and contributed to Heim its vision of what was needed in Westminster. Its reward was to have a priest, Fr Michael Hollings, selected as part of the terna, but, ironically, its principal work at this point was to have developed a culture in which priests from Westminster, including one or two members of the Chapter, felt able to make known to the Nuncio their concern about the possibility of Worlock’s ascending to the See of Westminster.

Worlock really wanted the job and was horrified to find that Heim – who had worked for Archbishop Roncalli in the Nunciature in Paris and who knew a thing or two about the sort of public presence the Archbishop of Westminster would need – was putting at the top of his terna list the name of Basil Hume, Abbot of Ampleforth. Worlock might have represented the trimmers, those who had seen the direction of the wind and had changed before it, but he was only part of the Catholic Establishment; Hume was part of the English Establishment, public schoolboy, House Master, son of a Knight, brother-in-law of a Cabinet Secretary, and, as a Benedictine (and son of a Frenchwoman), somebody with myriad links to Europe, not to Ireland or just to Westminster.


Worlock was furious when Hume was named – “the better man did not win” – but was given the consolation prize of Liverpool, and encouragement to use his administrative talents to develop the Church in England and Wales in accordance with the “spirit of Vatican II” at the same time as Hume provided the leadership and the public face. Hume was the leader; Worlock was the manager.


Their immediate problem was the Bishops: most of the Bishops had been formed in the old days, and both believed in and valued their independence. Although the Bishops’ conference existed as an entity, it was fairly toothless. But if Hume and Worlock could force the Bishops to cede “sovereignty” to the Conference and could then replace them (through a complaisant Nuncio) as they reached 75 with a new breed of new-thinking Bishops, they could transform the Church in England and Wales.

The NPC was designed to effect this change: to use the numbers of engaged lay people and compliant priests to design and build new structures for the Church. To anybody who remembers “entryism” in the Labour Party – the way in which Party structures were taken over by the “new Left” – the methodology is familiar. First of all, the premise on which the NCP was predicated was expounded:

“Over the past decade, since the end of the Second Vatican Council the Catholic Church in its homes, parishes and dioceses has been slowly discovering the fruits of the Council. This has been a process both exciting and unnerving: exciting because of the new visions unveiled; unnerving because of the unfamiliarity of the ways.

On every journey there were to be opportunities to check the way and to take stock, so as to walk more certainly in the future. There have also been several consultation-documents bringing responses call¬ing for careful consideration. With all this in view a National Pastoral Congress will be held in 1980, taking as its theme: "Jesus Christ, the Way, the Truth and the Life".

In the eighteen months preceding the Congress every diocese in England and Wales will make its own preparation, so that at the Congress itself a substantial representation of the Church, prepared in mind and spirit, will be able to reflect together on the developing life and mission of the Church. In this way, the Catholic Church in England and Wales may be encouraged to go forward renewed in faith and hope and love.” (June 1978).

The ground was prepared during the intensive preparation period: existing structures of parish-deanery-diocese were built into a series of discussion groups which attracted activists to manage the administration and reporting of the groups, and who would become the delegates to the NPC itself. The pre-Congress discussion phase was structured around a series of Discussion Papers, which were amalgamated into Congress discussion papers.

The Discussion Papers, looked at in 2012, are blatantly partisan, and it is only when one remembers how self-selecting the discussion groups were, that one can believe that they weren’t laughed out of court. They are built around a congregation ”at Mass this Sunday, any Sunday”. Here are five of the vignettes used to stimulate discussion:

“Joe is a Shop Steward in his union. He will soon be having discussions with his employers about an increase in wages. If they don’t get what they want the union will go on strike. Joe doesn’t like the idea but he feels that the wages of himself and his workmates are far too low and not enough to bring up a family on. Where do his Christian principles come in?”

“Lorraine Jeanne Baptiste is 9 years old. Her mother is a single-parent who comes from St Lucia in the West Indies. Her mother has tried to get Lorraine into the local school but the application was refused on the grounds that the mother is said not to be a practising Catholic. The girl is going to catechism classes with the local nuns in preparation for her First Communion, but she does not really know the other Catholic children in the parish.”

“Jim Doyle has just been made redundant at work. He had been lapsed for some years but started going to church again recently when the local Churches jointly condemned the National Front and took a stand together about unemployment. This made sense to him, though he still cannot make much of the Sunday sermon.”

“On the estate, where there are some ten thousand people, there are no resident doctors or health clinics. The local hospital for the area is about to be axed. There is high unemployment in the area and the Job Opportunities Programme has not been able to cater for all the summer school leavers. So there is resentment and increasing vandalism. John Barber, who has one son in the Army, another unemployed and a girl due to leave school next year, is worried about the amount spent on national defence and armaments. He has been urging that more Government investment be channelled locally but was challenged by the former curate whom the Bishop has now sent to be a naval chaplain. The curate argued that the defence spending was more than justified to defend western freedom.”

“Sister Margaret has been trying to start an ecumenical prayer group. She has had a mixd response. Some say that it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you say your prayers. Others find it hard to pray together unless they know each other from church. She believes that only through prayer can they be united as Christians.”

You don’t need to be a theologian to understand what the right answers are! And the discussion groups sent their replies to the dioceses, and thence they went to the organisers who collated them and summarised them as Diocesan Reports. In the interim, a list of “priorities” was issued, and “people” were asked to indicate the six topics they considered of major importance. The results were as follows:

1. Unity with other Christians 67%
2. The particular needs and problems of young people 66%
3. Education in all forms and for every age group 60%
4. Third World: justice and peace; world hunger; overseas aid; apartheid 58%
5. War, peace and violence; arms trade; human rights 56%
6. Ministry: vocations; deacons and other ministries 54%
7. How to spread the Christian Gospel more effectively 51%
8. More responsible involvement of lay Catholics in the life of the Church 49%
9. Present day value of our local organisation in the life of the Church 36%
10. Racial discrimination; immigration; multi¬cultural society 34%
11. Town and country living; decay of the inner city, etc. 27%
12. Use of natural resources; nuclear energy; pollution; profit 21%
13. Role of women in the Church and in the world 20%

This is a list of the concerns of the activists and does not in any way represent what the Catholic in the pew was concerned about because the Catholic in the pew was given Hobson’s choice: this was the way in which the Church would redefine itself. No change was not an option. Remember that when this list was drawn up there was no adult Catholic so young that he or she couldn’t remember the Mass in Latin, and the whole pre-Vatican II world of parish life. The mute didn’t understand how they had lost what they had; the deserting were not interested in what seemed to be a new religion; it was the activists who were redefining the Church.

The Last Post

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Not just that there has been another virulent attack on my computer, and, this time, on two different accounts on it, and a laptop which seems to have been infected as well.

But also, courtesy of Ches and James an insight into where things are and where I probably shouldn't be.

Imagine a fleet of ships commanded by an Admiral who says all the ships under his authority have to tie fast to a particular rocky isle.  Imagine that many do, but you gradually realise that on yours, the Captain, the senior officers, and those of the crew who deal with the officers have decided that rather than tie fast they will remain close to the rocky isle, but not tied to it.  They will give all the appearance of being obedient to the Admiral except in the most fundamental of obediences. 

The Admiral gave the order because he, better than anyone, is in a position to see just how rough the sea is, but the Captain, Officers and senior rates on our ship reckon that they know better, especially about the place where they are and think that their own ways of dealing with what might come will be perfectly adequate.

Most of the crew will remain oblivious about what's going on, but a few are aware not just of the Admiral's orders but of the senior officers' agreement to ignore them.

What should they do?  Mutiny?  If not, what should they do?  Acquiesce?  In which case what should they answer when at some point in the future the Admiral, or his leader, asks why they disobeyed?

If this is all nonsense, then I should stop blogging because this is all nonsense.

If this isn't all nonsense, then I should stop blogging because I shouldn't be leading crewmen against their officers: there is no justification for Mutiny.

I suppose that the revelation that  Kiko Argüello greets Bishops with the question "Do you believe?" left me wondering how the public statements and public praxis of some our ours could produce an answer "Yes!" without a degree of mental reservation that would make such a "Yes" valueless.  And it was realising that thinking like that about our Bishops was making me the wrong person to write about Catholicism in England and Wales.  I will not criticise our Bishops for what they seem to believe.

So I'd better not blog here any more for a good while.  I'm sure I shall be back eventually, and if I have anything uncontroversial to say (Alan B take note) I can say it over at the Guild.  And a way of getting in touch will always be to comment on any old post from the last few years, all of which comments go to a totally separate e-mail account. 

God Bless you all; God Help us all.
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The Magic Circle: And There's More!

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Ches defined the Collaborationist Catholic far better than I could have done, but as he went for it at the individual level, I'd like to suggest how it works at the national level.

At least one Bishop made a bit of a name for himself within the Circle when he said he was one who spoke truth to Power: he articulated what much of the Bishops' Conference and its staff, and the diocesan staffs, have been about for ages, but missed out the fact of the complete self-delusion that accompanied the self-image.  (His, if not he, were a bit slow to admit that it was a quote and not his own bon mot, as well.)

Anybody who heard somebody involved in Catholic education saying that s/he had "been talking to Andrew Adonis" either bought into the fact that here was someone who had dealt with Lord Adonis, when he was Parliamentary Under Secretary at the Department for Children, Schools and Families, and had talked truth to Power; or, and in my opinion, more likely, saw someone who was so sucked into the fact that s/he was talking to almost a Minister that s/he would gladly negotiate away the Catholicity implicit in whatever proposition being debated at the time, just to be able to say that s/he had communed with those at the centre.

The truth is that the Catholic Church in England and Wales was turned inside out by Tony Blair: we got absolutely nothing in return for embarrassingly unctuous fawning.  Even worse: now Blair and his party have been stripped of all power, the usual suspects are still spouting the same rubbish that was rubbish even when Power pretended to listen when the rubbish masqueraded as Truth, but to exactly the same people.  We're being patronised by the Opposition; the Government is simply ignoring us.

The line is always the same: you have to be at the centre to influence what's going on; you won't get everything, but you can safeguard your core interests.  You can't, of course, because you're dealing with people who are much better than you are at this sort of thing, and who aren't going to compromise the way that you are, because they aren't amateurs like you are.  The end result is that you end up with nothing except "access", if you're lucky, and nothing except "access" for your new agents who are ideologically compromised with their interlocutors, if you're unlucky.  We're really, really, unlucky.

One thing about the current Cruddas/OP issue is odd, though: this is an internal-to-the-Magic-Circle issue which seems somehow to have leaked out, and which has grown legs.  This isn't because of the five or six bloggers involved: I don't think we count for that much in the Catholic blogosphere in E&W, never mind further beyond ("Ringo isn't even the best drummer in the Beatles").  How has it gathered such traction?

The Magic Circle: A Definition

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Francis Davis, whom I cited in my last post as a member of the Magic Circle, seems to have become shy about what that means.

"Oh, and for reader’s of the Muniment Room if you read on across this blog the idea that I may be part of the ‘magic circle’, I must admit, did bring light relief in my house and a few others on a rainy weekend!"

Leaving aside the grammar and punctuation, the fact is that his self definition as a member of one committe of the (Catholic) Archdiocese of Southwark and of another in the (CofE - multiply Brownie points by two for ecumenism) Diocese of Oxford (never mind the presumably secular Higher Education Funding Council Panel)  makes him part of the Magic Circle.

Damian, who popularised the phrase, has never got round to defining "Magic Circle" (mainly because it is blindingly obvious what it means, even if you're part of it and want to pretend you aren't) but, just to help poor Francis, who seems to have even lost his CV from his website, I have adopted Henry Fairlie's original definintion of the "Establishment", which fits the bill squarely:

"By the 'Magic Circle', I do not only mean Eccleston Square - though it is certainly part of it - but rather the whole matrix of official and social relations within which power is exercised. The exercise of power in the Catholic Church in England and Wales, both at diocesan level and within the structures of the Catholic Bishops' Conference, cannot be understood unless it is recognised that it is exercised socially."

We know who they are; they know who they are.  I named a whole bunch of them earlier this year, here. 

The point, though, isn't who they are, but what they are doing?  We've seen a couple of examples in the last few weeks involving Cruddas (the Catholic Intern programme, the speech at Blackfriars), but there's an awful lot more.
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Blackfriars, Cruddas, Dominicans ...

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What on earth is going on in the Order of Preachers? 

And who is Francis Davis (other than a Magic Circle insider) to stir the, errr, pot so avidly here?

If there is any question about what life's going to be like if the powers-that-be feel threatened, then this story, and this man's posts about this story, might give an idea.

Prayers for Fr Pereira.
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Liturgical Particpation, Again

During discussion on a recent post, about how the new translation might end up bringing in its wake as many problems as it might resolve, I quoted and said:

'"Assisting at Holy Mass you should have the four-fold intention of: Adoration, by which we acknowledge our dependence on God as the Ruler over life and death; of Praise and Thanksgiving for the benefits conferred on us; of Reparation for our sins and negligences; of Impenetration, to implore of Him the grace necessary for our salvation. If you desire to implore other benefits from God, through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, very well, but do not forget the main intention."

This is how we "participate" in Mass, and if we do so by praying the Rosary, then fine, but always remember that the four-fold intention is a way of describing how we become part of the sacred action which is taking place in Church for us.'

Anagnostis replied from an Orthodox point of view and made some telling points which, while not relevant to what I'm writing about here, are none the less of great interest.  The bits I'm interested in here are:

"A couple of years ago, an RC poster asked me to provide a diagrammatic description of the Orthodox Church, equivalent to the familiar "pyramid" provided by himself: Pope at the apex, then a narrow tier of Card. Metropolitans, a larger one of diocesan bishops, then presbyters and deacons, with the mass of laity forming the base. I provided, to his bafflement, a diagram of the Divine Liturgy: the bishop on his cathedra, the presbyters in the altar, the deacons running between altar and nave (i.e. "ship"/Ark)where the laity, the readers and monastics together with the Mother of God, the Angels and Saints stand to unite themselves with the death, resurrection and glorification of the Lord."
and

"Anyway - the purpose of the Eucharistic liturgy is to make present the Body of Christ in both senses: in the Eucharistic gifts and simultaneously in the people - the WHOLE people, the Mystical Body of Christ. The "Mystery of Christ" is the Eucharistic Mystery which "generates" the Mystical Body. This is how the Church is constituted/made/realised - by, in function of, the Eucharistic Liturgy."

(I stress that I am extracting only part of something Anagnostis was writing for a different purpose.)

The Catholic who is properly at home with the scholastic explanation of what actuosa participatio really means in the context of the Mass will also be sympathetic to the Orthodox mystagogical explanation of the same event, even if he takes a few goes to begin to get his mind around some breathtakingly differently ways of thinking about the Liturgy and the Church. 

My point is that the number of people in the group "Catholics who will understand Liturgy in this way" is very limited and doesn't include anybody at all (as far as I can tell) in the Magic Circle.  This in turn means that the Benedict-inspired moves towards a restoration of the baby to the bath water are being met with opposition born of incomprehension.  This is not language and these are not concepts with which (for example) the average member of the Catholic Education Service can ever have engaged.

I tread lightly here, because I just begin to wonder how far a local Church which doesn't or can't engage with things like this at the conceptual level can in fact be Catholic.  If "being Church" is in fact a result of participation with the Sacred Liturgy on its terms rather than on ours, of being absorbed into the eternal Mystery of Atonement and Salvation rather than drinking Fairtrade coffee and collecting for CAFOD, then what is actually happening weekend after weekeend in our churches?

Who Needs The Skibbereen Eagle?

Who needs the Skibbereen eagle, when we have the CBCEWDIA?  (And "Muslim fellows", surely, rather than "fellow Muslims", or even "Muslim fellow citizens"?)

Bishop Lang expresses sorrow at violence in Cairo
BISHOP Declan Lang of Clifton, chairman of the bishops' department for international affairs, has spoken of his "great sadness" at the violence  that left 26 people dead in Cairo earlier this month.  The bishop said: "It be hoped that the Egyptian political authorities will spare no effort in addressing at long last the festering problems that have affected  the Coptic faithful in Egypt so that they can become equal citizens alongside their fellow Muslims." He said his prayers were with Catholic and Orthodox leaders in Egypt.

A peaceful protest by Copts on Sunday evening was attacked by crowds armed with rifles, sticks and swords. A military vehicle later sped into a group of Copts.
H/t to the Catholic Herald.

New Translation: Two Cheers And Two Concerns

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Of course it's better.  It didn't have to be any good to be better, and it's actually good, so it's much better than what it's replaced.  So let's consign what we've just lost to the dustbin of history, and raise our first cheer for formal sacral language in our worship (even if at least one priest has already worked out where he can introduce paraphrases and ad-libs).

Second cheer: perhaps you need to have had some training in the art of translation to understand just how bankrupt a "philosophy of translation" dynamic equivalence actually is, and how corrupt (or, if not corrupt, ignorant) the people who pushed it for the 1970 "translation" were.  The idea that we could "hear" the Mass in the same way that first century Christians "heard" the Mass is risible: what happens is that ideologues impose their own version of ecclesiology and retrofit a "translation" which just happens to confirm the premises on which their ecclesiology is based. 

Simple example: actuosa participatio is translated as "active participation" in the sense of everybody doing stuff all the way through Mass and joining the priest in what he is doing instead of being translated as "conscious participation" in the sense of everybody at Mass uniting themselves with the action of the priest at the altar to unite at the re-presentation of Christ's Sacrifice at Calvary, because those pushing the New Church way believed (completely without foundation but with lots iof wishful thinking) that that is what the early Church was like. 

A more complex example would be the imposition of Eucharistic Prayer 2: the belief that an ancient prayer must be an ancient anaphora, the deformation of the ancient prayer to conform with 1960s notions of what a second century anaphora should look like, and the collapse of the stout parties when it was proved that the ancient prayer a) wasn't an ancient anaphora, and b) was a couple of centuries younger than the Roman Canon.  (Except, of course, they didn't collapse, and we still have EP 2.)

My first concern, is that more and more we are being straightjacketed into a single option for our actuosa participatio: told when to stand, when to sit, when to kneel; what to say, what to sing; when to do, when to watch the priest (and his many helpers) do.  When, at the elevation of the chalice there is a mass turning round of the faithful and a scrabble for the leaflet with the new words for the proclamtion of the mystery of faith to make sure that we all say the right new words, it becomes clear to me that something that was lost when the New Rite of Mass came in is just not going to be repaired by the new translation: indeed, the new translation, peversely, might engrain the worst effects of the lex orandi lex credendi disasters of the last forty years.  Two dimensional participation might be here for the long term.

My second concern is actually one Anagnostis first tipped me off to.  When not roaming the web calling me a Pharisee (and he was probably not far from the mark) he has some penetrating insights, one of which haunts me more and more: there is something very wrong with the Church when everybody is a liturgiologist.  The Liturgy isn't something for most of us to study, discuss, or dissect: we are not called to Missolatry.  We should be worshipping God at Mass, not watching the priest.  (Of course, there shouldn't be anything to watch: just the priest doing what every priest everywhere does every time.)

I feel more an more like somebody who believes in the spiritual value of icons during the reign of Constantine V.  Perhaps the best thing to do is to withdraw and not discuss the subject.
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The Vaughan

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I haven't written about the continuing issue of the Cardinal Vaughan school, and the dispute between its parents and governors on the one side, and the Archdiocese of Westminster on the other, because, frankly, I haven't got time to care about everything.  I did my bit in respect of CES by resigning as parent foundation governor of a Catholic school and entrustred the remainder of my childrens' education to the state, rather than to bodies which take their marching order from the staff working for the Catholic Bishops' Conference for England and Wales.

It was nevertheless interesting to read here that the Archdiocese was forced to give up its struggle to decatholicise change the nature of the school because of the pressure brought  by parents and governors.

'Tis a mad world, my masters
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Friday Abstinence

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Am I the only person who is finding the period between 2359 on Thursday and 0001 on Saturday a serious trial?  How much meat there is out there!  Why is cooked breakfast the thing everyone goes to on Friday? 

This isn't to complain, but for me at least not eating meat on Friday isn't a simple flick between two pages in a recipe book, but a fairly brutal instruction to give something up regularly in a way that two days a year could never hope to manage.  I hope in a way that it doesn't become less challenging, and that it keeps on being so hard, because it will make me better.

I still haven't had a dinner invitation, but I had one to go out for breakfast: I said "No thanks - I don't eat meat on Fridays" and was rewarded with a tremendous laugh, as if I 'd told the best joke ever.  They still expected me to turn up though, and were petulant with me for not doing so.  It's certainly not martyrdom, but I catch myself wishing that if I have to make a Catholic fool of myself it could be because of my brilliant defence of Scholasticism, or my brilliant new insight into the procession of the Holy Spirit, not for turning down a couple of sausages, some rashers and a bit of black pudding.

Did I mention that I've not eaten meat today?

I suppose black pudding is meat.  Did the Fathers say anything about it?
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Battlelines Being Drawn Up

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The Archdiocese of Westminster won't answer Ches's questions about Quest booking a diocesan venue for a Conference, and now Mass is to be celebrated publicly for Quest.

The dioceses of England and Wales are asked by a blogger how many exorcists there each have and the Communications Officer for the Diocese of Middlesborough not only refuses to asnswer him but tells him that blogging should be made a serious criminal offence.

The Catholic Truth Society has issued an instruction which accompanies just about every copy of the new translation available to Catholics in parishes that says that Holy Communion is to be received standing.

Add to this the ongoing Catholic Voices brouhaha (a good Humptydumptyish word), some remarkable examples of secular priests being moved about, and you don't need to see albino monks to think that something might be afoot.

In Austria and Ireland, the rebellion is being led by priests inn parishes.  In this country it seems to be being led by apparatchiks in Eccleston Square and diocesan curiae.

We are in for some interesting times, and the longer the Pope lives, the more interesting.  Imagine all what will be let loose if the SSPX manages to stay reasonably united and sign anagreement with Rome!
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"My Song: 'Tantum Ergo'"

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Try to guess who wrote this.  A clue: he is alive, aged 54, and has been published just in the last month in at least the Daily Mail, the Guardian and Private Eye.

"We had two Masses a week, on Wednesdays and Sundays, and two Benedictions, on Tuesdays and Fridays. Every Benediction, we would sing a hymn called "Tantum Ergo". "Tantum ergo/ Sacramentum/ Veneremur cernui/ Et antiquo/ Documentum..." We sang it twice a week for five years. We never asked what it meant, and I still don't know. Sacraments, venerate, antique, documents ... but its meaning didn't matter. Its sound was its meaning; its absence of meaning was its meaning. Latin was God's first language, its meaning floating direct to heaven on a cloud of incense pouring out of a thurible swung with such vigour by the seniors that the new boys in the front row would often disappear, coughing and splutter­ing, in an unholy fog.

Thirty or more years on, I make my living from parody, nudging sense into nonsense, translating the words of others back into their original gibberish. I find "Tantum Ergo" has lodged in my head, a dissident group of my brain cells forming a chapel choir, singing it at full blast in impromptu moments. And my imagination keeps returning to Farleigh House, Farleigh Wallop, Basingstoke, Hants. Or perhaps it has always been stranded there, the boarder that never came home.
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Craig Brown

From My Sickbed

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Well, metaphorically, at least.

I was supposed to be travelling again but instead was felled by a dose of flu which, if it is this season's, might as well be called Elephant Flu for the force with which it strikes.  Bad throat, becomes "Help! I must have swallowed some acid!" in just a few hours, and once the Tyrozets won't touch the sore throat, the temperature rockets skywards.

After 24 hours of this I decided to break through the fever: a chicken biryani and a very large brandy, followed by a large dose of Night Nurse, left me dripping wet, but I slept for 10 hours and have since "only" had sides which ache as though I'm in a straightjacket and a hacking cough as though I were back smoking 30 a day.

I have little energy for movement and ended up so bored I even set up a Twitter account, but could not think of anything to say in 140 characters or less so have left it unchristened.  The nearest I have got to going out has been to foray around some blogs.

The serious point in all of this parading of self pity is to suggest that if this is this season's flu, my very strong advice is to have the jab if you're offered one.

And to show you a chaffinch in the garden:

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Pope Has Great Insight - (Water Remains Wet)

The ever more youthful Pope included this in his address to German seminarians:

"We all know that Saint Peter said: “Always be prepared to make a defence to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet 3:15). Our world today is a rationalist and thoroughly scientific world, albeit often somewhat pseudo-scientific. But this scientific spirit, this spirit of understanding, explaining, know-how, rejection of the irrational, is dominant in our time. There is a good side to this, even if it often conceals much arrogance and nonsense. The faith is not a parallel world of feelings that we can still afford to hold on to, rather it is the key that encompasses everything, gives it meaning, interprets it and also provides its inner ethical orientation: making clear that it is to be understood and lived as tending towards God and proceeding from God. Therefore it is important to be informed and to understand, to have an open mind, to learn. Naturally in twenty years’ time, some quite different philosophical theories will be fashionable from those of today: when I think what counted as the highest, most modern philosophical fashion in our day, and how totally forgotten it is now ... still, learning these things is not in vain, for there will be some enduring insights among them. And most of all, this is how we learn to judge, to think through an idea – and to do so critically – and to ensure that in this thinking the light of God will serve to enlighten us and will not be extinguished. Studying is essential: only thus can we stand firm in these times and proclaim within them the reason for our faith. And it is essential that we study critically – because we know that tomorrow someone else will have something else to say – while being alert, open and humble as we study, so that our studying is always with the Lord, before the Lord, and for him."

Imagine being 23 or 24 and being given this as your marching orders!

Language, Truth, And ... Logic?

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It's odd how Catholic Hierarchies all over the English-speaking world are hitting out hard to proclaim that "marriage means the union of a man with a woman": not odd because there is some problem with the proposition, but odd because there is another linguistic battle in which they rolled over.

"Priest" only has one meaning: it is a man who is ordained to offer sacrifice.  In the Christian Church, "priest" is used to describe the man who, called by God, is ordained to be able to re-present Christ's sacrifice on Calvary.

"Priest" describes a big ask: it's limited to men; few are called, and fewer answer the call.  Those who do so are changed irrevocably; they're not just men any more: they're priests, men who are more than men, men who are set apart from other men.

So why has the term "women priests" been accepted as the premise on which the debate about the ministerial role of women should be conducted?  Women in other denominations can be ministers, vicars, clergy, reverends, but they can't be priests.  (My guess, by the way, is that few of the women who are in orders would actually believe that they have been ordained to offer a sacrifice anyway.)  Opposition to the idea of "women priests" isn't about being "anti-woman", any more than opposition to the idea of male mothers is about being "anti-man".  But the pass has been sold.

I animadvert from time to time on the subject of the education of the members of our Hierarchy: whether they have been intellectually formed to take on the secular opposition to what we believe in.  I wonder if they have also been taken in by counsellors: by people who are far more aware than they are about what words mean, and where they lead.
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Brief Foray Into Politics

Is Herman van Rompuy serious?  

In his speech as "President of Europe" (or whatever he actually is) to the United Nations General Assembly he said:

"Because last year, something important happened in a part of the world very close to us, in Northern Africa and the Arab world. Peoples of the Arab world are looking for democracy, for freedom, for justice. In some countries they achieved it, in other countries they are involved in reform processes. So this is really something astonishing. The world is more and more moving in the direction of democracy. And we are the fatherland, or the motherland of democracy. So the EU is very glad with that kind of evolution. And where we can, we help, as we did in Libya. We did it via our Member States, via the EU as the EU, even militarily. We helped to bring Kadhafi down, and give full support to the democratic forces in Libya."



Back Up - And Backed Up

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In a house where there are more laptops than people (never mind the PCs) the various means by which and states in which IT systems die become more familiar.

My sympathy for Fr Blake is the greater because I had to learn the hard way why backing up is so important: in my case it was losing four years' worth of photos.

Buy memory!  It is the muggle equivalent of the Pensieve.

It took less than an hour to remove the old PC and install this new PC, all the peripherals, and a decent anti-virus system.  Within two days I had reloaded all of the software as well.  How different the world is from the 1990s!
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Temporarily Off Net

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The PC was badly messed up by the hackers: open ports, a botnet driver installed in the recovery partition, and a new email account whose password I couldn't access.

I got to the point where I decided that trying to lock down a five year old XP Media Professional PC was probably going to be more trouble than it's worth, and as I don't want to make my laptop my prime means of accessing the internet, I've bought a new desktop and will begin the installation process tomorrow, assuming that I can complete all of the backup processes tonight.

What did we do before computers?
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Get The Tablet That's Right For You!

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That was the title of the e-mail waiting in the queue.

I thought: a few years after the Oldmeadow affair, once things had settled down a bit: Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh both in their pomp; Douglas Woodruf adding a bit of editorial tone.  Orthodox Dominicans dazzling us with theology; Jesuits providing a home for Fr Martindale; Ronnie Knox showing what an Ordinariate might aspire to, given that the mainstream Romans can't.

Before the war or after?  Hard to decide.  Before the Holy Week reforms, but probably during the Pontificate of Pius XII is my best bet, so say 1947 to about 1952.

Fantasy of course: the e-mail was from The Carphone Warehouse, and the Tablet on offer is a tablet.

At least it wasn't The Suppository.
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Tiaras, Etc

(Here's one I posted over at the Guild)

It's taken me quite a while to shake off my wish for a Papal Coronation, or at least for the Pope to wear a tiara. There is something about the triple crown that speaks of a more muscular Catholicism: a Catholicism which faces up to the world, at least, but looks as though if the flesh and the Devil want a go, then we're ready.


The fact of JPs I and II doing without Coronations, and settling merely for Inaugurations felt a bit wet. It was a though a dimension of the Pontificate had been sacrificed merely to give a good impression; as though the "temporal rule" bit was being somehow downplayed, merely to act in harmony with the spirit of the age.

Benedict XVI's decision to remove the tiara from his arms and to replace them "merely" with a mitre is actually a much richer and more symbolic gesture, and one which situates the Church in the new Millennium. The Church needed to develop its independence through the Papal States in the Middle Ages so that the Papacy and the Church did not become prisoner or vassal of the Emperor or some lesser monarch. But the independence became an end in itself, and the revenues accruing to the States became an end in themselves to a succession of Popes. Their capture by Garibaldi in 1870, and the "imprisonment" of the Pope until the time of the Lateran Treaty in 1929 seemed like a disaster, but was in fact the start of an era of liberation. The Vatican City State might look odd, but showed how the Papacy could maintain its independence during the Second World War. In more recent years, it has ceded many of the trappings of statehood - such as a completely independent police force - because its independence is guaranteed.
Thus the logic of the abolition of the tiara: the Pope doesn't need the trappings of authority any more. He is the Bishop of Rome, and his curia can work independently of Italian civil authority, as long as it behaves honestly.

And this leads me on to the title of Patriarch of the West. I must admit to having been mystified when the Pope stopped using the title, but in the light of his renunciation of the tiara, things become clearer. The Petrine Ministry is exercised by the Bishop of Rome, and any title which appears to outrank, rather than complement, the title of Bishop of Rome has to go. His Primacy goes with his See and nothing else. To use the title of Patriarch might in some way detract from or dilute the fact that as Bishop of Rome, he has all the title and authority he needs.

This is not to detract from the title of Patriarch as used in the East - I think that in taking this decision the Pope's mind, for once, was not on the East. It was more on liberating Catholics from thinking of the Papacy in terms of temporal authority so they could concentrate on what the Petrine Ministry has to offer the twenty-first century.

Outnumbered: Very Funny, But ...

The new series of Outnumbered began last night and didn't disappoint, or at least not us: the anarchic fantasy of a boy which ends up with specially trained badgers whose job it is to make sure that people who are buried actually are dead; or a girl (pictured left) who wants to wear a party frock to a funeral because she has been told that the "celebration of his life" is fundamentally a happy occasion.  It is the funniest thing on, at the moment.

At its heart, however, is the great vacuum produced when God is replaced by relativism.  The writers pick out perfectly a world in which everybody defines and constantly redefines the world and relationships in terms of what suits them at the time, and in which social obligations are thought of in terms of what others owe us instead of what we owe them.

A perfect picture of what the urbanised part of this country is, to a large extent, like: pagan, rather than godless; capable of casting bread on the waters, but not necessarily disinterestedly; "dementors in Per Una" as Rita so perfectly described them.

Rita, at least, has found somewhere this tide hasn't reached, at least not yet.  But I must admit that where I am it feels like a tsunami, and there doesn't seem to be much high ground left.

8-2: But Stuffing Still Knocked Out

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I think that, on balance, I have a pretty good supply of saeva indignatio: as a rule, when something turns up to bother me, I react, and, in the cant of management consultants, I react assertively.  It is very rare that I am left winded, floundering, and ready to throw in the towel.

But in the same week that my Parish Priest has said that he will not have the new translation in his parish before he has to: i.e. not next week; I read the far more dispiriting news from Fr Brown that seminarians are being hounded to discover if any of them are secret biformalists: if you are attached to the EF, there is at best a question mark about you.

Imagine the resource that is being applied to achieve this: imagine the web of control which seeps out from Eccleston Square to ensure that the Eccleston Square vision of Church is not (in its view) sullied.  Worse still, imagine that this is not a panic reaction from a clique which is losing influence, but a refocusing of effort by a bureaucracy which decides for itself what "on message" means, and has decided that Benedict XVI is not on message for the Church in England and Wales, and that we are better off without priests who wish to conform to his vision of Catholic priesthood.

And I just feel that the game is up: they will win, they are winning: perhaps they have won, here and now.  They won't prevail, because we have been promised that they won't prevail, but the enemy is within and it feels that the battle is probably lost.  The difficult mind game of remaining faithful to Peter at the same time as remaining faithful to the Head of our local Church is being strained to breaking point.

Even if the gates of Hell are already gaping wide to receive the agents - and count the weight of every child lost to the Faith because of the actions of the agencies of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales to guess what the balance might look like - we have to face the fact that, temporally, we may have lost already: if they stand four square against the Pope, how can they, or anybody who pays for them, describe themselves as Catholic.

There are about ten people who will read this and understands what 8-2 means in this context.  It means being able constantly to renew by being faithful to the past, and by understanding that we are all individuals and not just types.

Thought For The Day

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A commenter in Fr Blake's combox asks:

What is it about this magnificent Pope that many bishops and priests feel unable to follow him? In a Church where there has been widespread division and too many episodes of quite dreadful behaviour, we should all be rallying under his example and leadership. He is a beacon of light, of truth, and of inherent goodness, that should inspire all our clergy to become like him. What a transformation this would bring to the Church and what great benefits would follow.


I'm sure I can't be the only one who has had the same thought, even if I haven't articulated it so well.  The good thing is that there are so many good priests who are inspired by him, and who are bringing great things to the Church, and we must continue to pray for them.

We need to pray for the others as well.
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"New" Hymn Book

The latest edition of Catholic,  the quarterly published by the Transalpine Redemptorists has arrived.

As ever feeling slightly guilty, I look first to see what this edition's supplement is going to be, before addressing myself to what the editor probably thinks is rather more important material in the paper itself.

This time it is a copy of Faith of our Fathers, the Papa Stronsay hymn book.  Guess what: no Bind Us Together; no Gathering Mass; no Kumbayah; but a (slightly more eclectic than I would have guessed) anthology of Catholic hymns.

Click on the contents page to read the list of hymns - and then subscribe!

Robert Robinson RIP

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Yes, he did Ask The Family and Call My Bluff, but he was a radio man, and even more, a man of written words.

Not just Stop The Week and Round Britain Quiz either - though they would be enough to make anybody who thinks that Stephen Fry is is any sense "clever" realise that Stephen Fry is merely meretricious.

It is in his essays in The Sunday Times and The Listener that he showed just how talented he was, even if his was a sufficently self-effacing character that he didn't push himself to the fore; just the same way that he invented the hostile political interview (and in which Jeremy Paxman now plays the Stephen Fry meretricious role), and allowed his rolw to become forgotten.

The fact is that Robert Robinson was not just clever and witty, but just a tad shy of making his listeners or readers think that he thought that he knew it all - because he knew that he didn't.

If you get a chance, look out for an anthology of his called Prescriptions of a Pox Doctor's Clerk: you'll read some very clever stuff, but also some articles in which the humanity, the fellow feeling, will bring you to tears.
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Did You Hear About The Thick Rioter ...

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Did you hear about the thick rioter who was arrested by police for stealing 30 chicken tikka masalas?

It turned out he'd misunderstood his mates when they said they were going out to rob Currys.

Aye thang yow!
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Dickens, Riots, Barnaby Rudge

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Rioting and clearing up afterwards used to be so much simpler.  The protestors gathered and after airing their grievances began to cause trouble; rioters attached to the protestors fell upon the town and began to destroy things and people, and to loot.  Magistrates read the Riot Act and the militia advanced and began to open fire on rioters and arrest those whom they did not kill.  Riot being a crime attracting the death penalty, all those arrested were hanged after being found guilty, within the month.  They were executed as close as possible to where they had been arrested, special gallows being erected at the scene.

Barnaby Rudge has been excellent reading these last few days!

No: of course I'm not saying that we should bring back the death penalty for riot.  But it is interesting to speculate on the difference between what happens when there is a clear consequence for being convicted of riot, and the possibility of 40 hours community service when nobody seems to want to spell out in black and white exactly what the criminal has done.

It is always odd to see something familiar and realise that there's something about it that's not right.  It's unsettling.  But because of the familiarity of the thing you thought you were going to see, the unfamiliar change is pushed away to one side, ignored or even forgotten.

I wonder if that's why the article Damian Thompson published about the Clifton Diocese's invitation to Tina Beattie to lecture inside the Cathedral about Vatican II seemed almost to pass me by when I read it.  In the universe I live in, no Catholic Cathedral would allow a (i) woman (ii) feminist (iii) to speak inside the Cathedral (iv) on a matter pertaining to the Faith. 

The Diocese might sponsor a public lecture in a seat of learning or some central hall, though not if the subject were to be to reject core teachings of the Church, or if aspersions were to be cast on the person of the Pope; but the Cathedral would be retained purely for liturgical functions.

Increasingly the moral universe in which I live feels like one parallel to the one in which my spiritual fathers live.  This in Clifton; secular concerts in Westminster Cathedral; CAFOD parading anti-Catholics at its conference; the list goes on.

I wonder whether concentrating on matters liturgical has become a sort of displacement therapy, whether it has become a tree for us to focus on while the wood goes to rack and ruin.

The problem is that if the starling has red eyes, it's no longer sturnis vulgaris: it is something else.

Back And Hacked!

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I've been away again and came back to find that while I was away, the e-mail account associated with this blog was hacked: somebody managed to get access to the address book and was spamming addressees.  As far as I know, it hadn't yet got beyond little blue pills, but my apologies if you were on the receiving end.

That e-mail address has been closed down and has been replaced by another.  If you received anything and haven't received an apology from the new address, please let me know in the combox, but don't include your e-mail address as I should already have it.

Normal service will hopefully be resumed very shortly.
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How Really To Do Hypocrisy

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The Prime Minister of Ireland, Enda Kenny, has decided that everything wrong in Ireland is the Church's fault.

He has attacked an institution that was already terribly weakened by what has already been revealed, and just as the institution has been revealed as being run by fairly mediocre people. 

He has gone for the jugular of an animal that won't fight back.

Well, as someone who is neither Irish, a priest or a child abuser, I don't have to keep cringing, and I must say that it looks to me as though the Irish political class is trying to lay all of the ills of Ireland on the one institution that it can get away with portraying as worse than itself.

Was it the Church which brought Ireland to bankruptcy?  Is it the Church which runs the most crony-ridden political system in Europe outside the Eastern Mediterranean?  Is it the Church which is putting people out of work, and cutting the salaries of those fortunate enough to stay in?

Has every abused child in Ireland been abused by a religious?  Has every crime covered up in Ireland been covered up by a religious?

And if you enumerated all of the corruption and hypocrisy in Irish public life, would the Church or its religious be responsible for all of it?

"Filth" was the word the Pope used to describe those who abused children, and I agree with him, and would probably be much more intemperate in language and in action were one ever to come into range.

But the idea that an Irish politician - especially one who has climbed to the top of his country's greasy pole - can blame the Church for the corruption of his country would be a joke, were it not such a nauseatingly cynical example of naked self-interest identifying a scapegoat.
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Catholic Truth Society

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First the new rubrics, then the attack on traditionalism.

Has it been reconquered?
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++Vin on Kneeling

I get the impression sometimes that pairs of blokes with sunglasses, tight, high-lapelled suits, and spiky gelled hair wander round Eccleston Square waiting for the opportunity to turn up at somebody's door and say: "The Archbishop doesn't like it".

It's not just enforcement of the rules - it's the in-your-face creation of rules that are "Vin rules" rather than "rules" in any other meaning of the word.

Just as the new translation of the Mass invites Catholics all over the English-speaking world to think again about what is happening when the priest takes hold of bread and wine on the altar; just at the time that the rules about music at Mass are (re)stated for the first time in 40 years; just at the time when the Pope reintroduces communion kneeling as the ideal; Archbishop Nicholls, ++Vin to his online friends, decides: "not here".

Whatever the Church Universal might think about the honour due by those receiving Him to Our Lord, in England and Wales the rubrics have been rewritten to say "queueing and standing is normal".

Now this is a rubric created by some people in the Bishops' Conference in England and Wales.  The Bishops are too timid to rule their local Churches any more.  Although each of them has the right to resist this sort of nonsense, none of them ever does.  They have bought into an idea that the Episcopal Conference "pools sovereignty" and makes them more collegiately stronger - instead of realising that by surrendering their own authority they will have to answer not just for how their diocese was run, but for how the decisions they agreed to affected other dioceses as well.

So when ++Vin tells us that all the Bishops have agreed that the holy queue is normative, not just he but all the Bishops of England and Wales have to share responsibility for the conseuqnces of that decision, not least their agreement to tell the Holy Father that he has got it wrong.

Tell me I'm wrong, but isn't this a rather big deal?  ++Vin and the E&W Bishops have declared that the holy queue and communion standing is "right", and that an insight unknown to the first 1950 years of Catholicsm is mandatory because they say so.  Even worse, there is no appeal to some spurious 2nd Century text to pretend that this is a practice of the "Early Church".  We have to do it because ++Vin and the Bishops say it's right.

And before, and probably since, the Pope has said it's wrong.

I struggle to say the right words, but it seems to me that this is a (literally) cataclysmic attempt to wash something the Chrch has taught as orthoprax away.  If ++Vin is really so ready to say that what the Church has always taught is wrong, in spite of what the Pope is teaching now, in respect of the way we receive Holy Communion, what else might we look forward to?

J F Powers

Ever since I read Fr Longenecker's views on J F Powers' Morte d'Urban, I had resolved to read a bit of this, to me unknown, novelist who seemed to inhabit a space most of us would love to explore: a Catholic author writing novels set in a Catholic world.  Graham Greene without the sex, hypocrisy, heresy, tendentious posturing, and adolescent showoff mannerisms which made him a houseld word in EngLit but a sorry advertisement for the Faith.  (You imagine elderly female Tabletistas still enjoying a frisson when they reach down the well-thumbed paperback of The Heart of the Matter from the shelf in the study and remember how dear Fr H*****t had explained how the artist was so very close to God, so close that what we saw as bad or harmful was just our reflection in the beauty of the artist's creation ... but I digress.)

I read Morte d'Urban and came to a similar conclusion to Fr L, namely that the author had picked on the story of a soul: how a priest had stopped trying to be what he wanted God to want him to be, and had chosen to be what God wanted him to be instead, even if it did disappoint some people.  There was a particularly deft touch in making me at least feel for the period I was reading that I had some feel for what living in places like Illinois in the 1950s really was like - the Catholicsm that was at the heart of the story wasn't particularly the overt theme of the narrative, and that meant that I had time to think about point in time when America was outsrtipping the rest of the world without having the technological ability to be conscious of where the rest of the world was; a point where the car (more likely the automobile) was finally winning and driving the train and the coach towards oblivion; while all the time ubiquitous air conditioning was not even a figment of the imagination and the climate was to be endured, not vanquished.

I ordered a couple more books: this time of Powers' short stories, and when faced a week and a bit ago with suddenly having to decamp for work, chose them to take as being new and different.  And they really were.

I had to read most of the stories twice: once to understand the world in which they were set, and only the second time to try to understand the story. 

We think we understand America (the USA, that is) but in fact what we understand is what the social media tell us America is.  For the period in which Powers is writing, America, for any European, is the gritty East Coast or the laid back West Coast.  there was also the West - the Wild West - but an urban world which doesn't reference even the east and west coasts, never mind a wider world, is something very new, to me at least.

I have no point of reference when dealing with this world: urban life in a mid-West town in the 1950s, where the Catholicsm has come neither from ireland nor from the Latin world, but from Germany is foreign.  But so is the America of some people using public transport because not everyone has cars; or travelling by train rather than plane; or the non-existence of air conditioning.

Powers describes this world so well that I found myself lost at times just in trying to imagine living in the world, instead of following him where he was leading.  But as an author he is very forgiving: going back to stories a second time, there was always a detail to trip me up which I had missed the first time round.  Like Jane Austen, or P G Wodehouse, he creates a world so perfectly that it becomes a real backdrop and the stories painted on it acquire some of their truth purely because he has written them there.

You are beginning to get the idea that I think I'm on to something - well, you're right.  I don't want to compare J F Powers with anybody else - "the Kingsley Amis of Illinois" on the fromt cover would be enough blurb to stop me from even reading the back cover - but just suggest that here is a writer whose skill with words, matched to an understanding of an environment to describe using them, might have ended up in something very special indeed.

Like An SSN

I feel not unlike an SSN at the moment - "Run Silent, Run Deep".

I'm back again for a few days before probably having to disappear off for another fortnight or so: meanwhile little or no access to the Interblog.

But here's a thought to be going on with: are any of the Bishops in England and Wales engaging in any way with any of the issues which predominate in the E&W Catholic blogosphere?  And why not?

I began to wonder whether it might be interesting to look at the way News International was forced to mend its ways (and how!) and see whether they might not be lessons for us to identify and learn.