Dame Thompson is having a go at all the bishops in one go now. (I trust their Lordships won't mind my pinching the photo from their website.) Look at them – do they really look like a bunch of hucksters who exist to protestantise the Church and to sell all our assets.There is much rejoicing on Holy Smoke because someone in Leeds has managed to involve English Heritage and, thereby, devalue some diocesan property. These are, remember, people who claim to be true sons and daughters of the Church.
I leave you with the words DT of the DT. I'll be interested to hear your answers.
Here are five questions for the Catholic bishops of England and Wales. Readers of this blog would be very interested in the answers – and so, I think, would the Vatican.
1. Why are churches attended by up to 200 people being earmarked for closure and sale to developers?
2. Why are some dioceses negotiating with developers before they have finished consulting parishioners about the future of their churches?
3. Why are some dioceses making little or no attempt to foster vocations, and turning away priests from overseas?
4. Why have traditionalist priestly societies set up by the Pope not been allowed to take over a single parish in England and Wales?
5. Why are the biannual meetings of the Bishops' Conference now conducted amid conditions of almost complete secrecy, in sharp contrast to practice in other countries? If you'll forgive the cliché, I do not know but I think we should be told.
1. Why are churches attended by up to 200 people being earmarked for closure and sale to developers?
2. Why are some dioceses negotiating with developers before they have finished consulting parishioners about the future of their churches?
3. Why are some dioceses making little or no attempt to foster vocations, and turning away priests from overseas?
4. Why have traditionalist priestly societies set up by the Pope not been allowed to take over a single parish in England and Wales?
5. Why are the biannual meetings of the Bishops' Conference now conducted amid conditions of almost complete secrecy, in sharp contrast to practice in other countries? If you'll forgive the cliché, I do not know but I think we should be told.
11 comments:
"Someone in Leeds" has managed to "devalue some diocesan property".
Oh, please. The people in question are parishioners who have invoked English Heritage in order to keep their parish church open for worship. What's wrong with that?
Of course there is nothing wrong with that and I would probably do the same. But this action will not save the church and will merely devalue the land. I'm not sure how devaluing Church assets can be a positive action.
The Pope himself gave the answer to question 4 in the course of a press interview when he was flying to Paris on Friday:
>>>>
QUESTION: What do you say to those in France who fear that the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum marks a step backwards with regard to the great insights of the Second Vatican Council? How can you reassure them?
BENEDICT XVI: The fear is unfounded because this Motu Proprio is simply an act of tolerance, with a pastoral aim for people who were formed in this liturgy, love it, know it, and wish to live with this liturgy. It’s a small group because this presupposes a formation in Latin, a formation in a certain culture. But for these people, having the love and the tolerance to allow them to live with this liturgy seems to me to be a normal requirement in faith and pastoral care for a bishop of our Church. There is no opposition between the liturgy renewed by the Second Vatican Council and this liturgy.
Each day [of the Council – Ed.], the Council Fathers celebrated Mass according to the old rite and, at the same time, they conceived a natural development for the liturgy in this whole century, for the liturgy is a living reality which develops and which conserves its identity in its development. There are therefore certainly different emphases, but all the same a fundamental identity which excludes a contradiction, and opposition between the renewed liturgy and the previous liturgy. I think, all the same, that there is a possibility of an enrichment on both sides. On the one hand, the friends of the old liturgy can and should know the new saints, the new prefaces of the liturgy, etc... On the other hand, the new liturgy has a greater emphasis on communal participation but, always, it is not simply a gathering of a certain community but always an act of the universal Church, in communion with all believers and all times, and an act of adoration.
In this sense, it seems to me that there is a reciprocal enrichment and it is clear that the renewed liturgy is the ordinary [= normal] liturgy of our time.
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The answer to question 5 is that all conferences have closed sessions. It enables freedom of speech without the risk of being misinterpreted by newspaper people like DT. There is no sharp contrast of practice with other countries at all. More bunk from DT, who is obviously living in a dream world.
As far as question 3 is concerned, this too is rubbish. Dioceses are certainly wooing candidates for the priesthood. What they are not doing is importing foreign priests who do not fit in to the prevailing culture. There have been many instances of priests from other countries having to be sent home because they were unable to relate properly to the people. It's not just about providing Mass-dispensing machines, DT.
"What they are not doing is importing foreign priests who do not fit in to the prevailing culture. There have been many instances of priests from other countries having to be sent home because they were unable to relate properly to the people."
Vas is dis?
What does "fitting into the prevailing culture" mean? And "unable to relate properly to the people," what's that all about?
What is the prevailing culture and who, precisely, defines it? How is fitting into it and relating properly to "the people" measured?
Sounds like a load of vacuous xenophobic bollox to me.
"Sounds like a load of vacuous xenophobic bollox to me."
It sounds like sensible pastoral care for both priest and people to me. Clergy need to be able to relate to the people for both their good. They aren't merely sacrament dispensing automata. Having said that, I can think of plenty of home grown clergy who can't relate to their congregations!
Please, Red Maria, keep your "bollox" to yourself – they are not welcome here which your opinions, of course, are. If you wish to be abusive towards people of differing viewpoint then you need a different blog: perhaps Holy Smoke (see link on the left) where bloggers can be as rude to each other as they like.
Forgive my lapsing into crude Anglo Saxonisms, Sandalista. It's a bad habit of mine invariably indulged in on other blogs which Holy Smokers would consider subversive (see my links).
I'm apt to having these explosions when I read something I consider ill-thought.
I must put it to "Anonymous" that s/he hasn't answered my questions. It's all very well saying that excluding foreign clergy is sensible pastoral care (how?) but s/he hasn't explained what the phrase "relate properly to the people" and "fitting into the prevailing culture" mean.
To me it just sounds like a euphemistic gloss on pure reaction. I find the notion that foreign priests are unable to relate to people or that they should assimilate into something or other, though what that is, no one has cared to explain, absolutely bizarre. Frankly it sounds like yet more getting at immigrants.
I don't know whether "Anonymous" or "the cardinal" have considered that foreigners, yes foreigners, are as equipped with such qualities as empathy that transcend local differences and mean they can relate to "the people" as well as anyone else.
Aside from that though, I do wonder at the consciousness of those who do not seem to realise that the Roman Catholic Church in England has largely been an immigrant church for a century and a half now.
Just because we live in bourgeois comfort and speak with cut glass English accents it doesn't mean that we should forget our roots, or, heaven forbid, ape the Establishment by sneering at more recent arrivals to these shores or setting up our own cosy exclusive cliques.
Red maria, the point is that the Church operates in a very different way in other countries - Poland is a good example - and problems arise when "visiting" clergy try to impose what they have been used to onto a very different system.
The same goes for spirituality. Trying to graft an extreme devotional type of spirituality onto a very different one simply causes problems.
Then there are language barriers - and the number of times you'll hear people say "I couldn't understand a word he said" because the English was so heavily-accented, or the essential vocabulary was lacking, are many.
Other factors can include the priest's unease communicating itself so that the people too become uneasy, or the priest giving the impression of a lack of interest or even lording it over them ("You should be grateful to have Mass - and you'll have it on my terms.")
This list is not exhaustive. Once again, we need presiders who will lead our communities in prayer and in growing in a post-Vatican II spirit, not grace-dispensing machines whose idea of being Church may be very different from ours.
Nothing xenophobic about this - simply acknowledging the reality of the situation. And I'm not getting at Poland. It all depends on the priest. One diocese in the southern part of the country had to repatriate as many as 20 Polish priests because they simply didn't fit in. Another southern diocese has three Polish priests who have fitted in very successfully (perhaps because they were never very happy with the way things were in Poland) but had to ask several others to leave.
I'm afraid the cardinal hasn't answered my questions with any rational precision, rather he has plunged even further into sweeping statement territory.
The problem, he says authoritatively, is when visiting clergy "impose" things on their British flock. How it is that they are imposing anything, he doesn't care to explain.
It gets worse.
He goes on to speak in derisory terms about these visiting clergy -surely he means foreigners - grafting an "extreme" - his word - devotional type of spirituality onto very different ones.
Now a number of things come to mind here, not least, what is this native British spirituality, which the cardinal implicitly assumes exists, how is it *objectively* described and more to the point, how is adherence to it *objectively* measured? In other words, how widespread is it among native British Catholics? What are its characteristics? If foreign spirituality is "extreme", how is British spirituality moderate? For that matter, what does he mean by "extreme" devotional spirituality? Recitation of prayers while gazing at a statue of the Madonna? Spontaneous levitation while doing the same? Praying more than once a day, or what?
Then we're told that there are language barriers - as there are with any immigrants whose first language isn't English - as though this is a) an extraordinary insight and b) an insuperable barrier to their ministry. Ramming home the point, he refers to the number of times people supposedly complain about - and here he becomes desperate - foreign priests' heavily accented English.
Not yet done, the cardinal speaks of foreign priests' unease - an objective fact, as it were - and this unease supposedly communicating itself (by supernatural means?) - and then bored with the pretence of sympathy, of foreign priests "lording it over" nice, moderate, British Catholics.
Phew! The reader is left gasping for breath at this irrational litany of wild assumptions and sweeping statements.
But don't exhale too fast, the list is not exhaustive, the indefatigable cardinal exclaims, preparing to launch into yet another catalogue of peevish moaning and excitable commentary.
Somehow Vatican II gets corralled into all this. How, I cannot fathom. Close reading of Gaudium et Spes furnishing not a single clue.
It gets crazier still. It turns out this is all about Polish priests. Apparently Poles don't "fit in". This is sounding more like the BNP by the second.
Once again: What does "fit in" mean and who, by the way, decides?
Apparently, all this is to do with acknowledging the "reality" of the "situation". Eh?
I didn't see objective rational reality intruding into the cardinal's jeremiad once. Not once.
I didn't see objective rational reality intruding into the cardinal's jeremiad once. Not once.
That's because you didn't want to. It took you long enough to respond, and then all you can do is show your ignorance of what is actually happening.
I have quoted a number of examples, including priests from abroad who have fitted in extremely well (which you chose to ignore), and all you can do is throw wild statements around the place.
What we're trying to talk about is the fact that the Church exists in a culture, and that it's not simply a question of flying in robots who will confect the Eucharist. Priests these days need to be able to lead their people in prayer, and be authentic spiritual leaders of their communities. Some priests from abroad can do that, other simply can't.
If you're not able to understand that simple fact, then I don't know how to help you. I'm sorry. Gaudium et Spes has absolutely nothing to do with this.
It has been pointed out to me that I should have dealt with red maria's accusations of anti-Polish bias.
There is no bias, simply objective observation. For example, the largest group of priests that English congregations have the greatest difficulty in understanding are the Mexicans. Once again, no prejudice against Mexicans, simply a statement of what people say.
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