"The Roman Catholic renaissance is held back by the bishops", says Damian Thompson in the Telegraph. I am a afraid Damian seems to have a thing about our Bishops and normally when he appears either in the Telegraph or in his own paper the The Catholic Herald there is a diatribe against the Bishops or Eccleston Square which he portrays as their dark, overstaffed, liberal stronghold. I would love to discuss it with him.He talks about a need for change, he has a point, after the Cardinal's retirement next year there is a need for a different direction. Cardinals Hume and Murphy-O'Connor seem to have developed the idea of special pleading for the Church in England and Wales, rather like Father Ted's "that will be an ecumenical question", they have often quoted Paul VI's "England is special ecumenical territory" and used this phrase to opt out of so many initiatives of the Universal Church, creating something of a bridge between Traditional Catholicism and Anglicanism. Hume used it famously to say the document on the "Unordained Faithful" did not apply to England and presumably used it to ignore much of the build-up to the Millennium, as well as the years of the Eucharist and the Rosary. I am told that in most dioceses world-wide the Compendium to the Catechism has been used as the basis for all Catechetical programmes, in England it seems to have been ignored, so far at least. I agree with Damian about the surprise that Benedict's election brought about in England and Wales. I think, too, this environment has encouraged our Bishops to see themselves as pushing the theological envelope, rather than as the Second Vatican Council would see them, "as gathering and strengthening the faithful".
The last Nuncio apparently told our Bishops that Episcopal Conference of England and Wales was the best in the world, just before his early retirement. One of the things that might indicate a change in the type of men who are appointed to the episcopate could well be the appointment last year of his successor Archbishop Faustino Sainz Muñoz, and the rumoured past involvement of the then Cardinal Ratzinger in the appointment or rather the vetoing of particular candidates. The change that the forthcoming ordination of women in the Church of England has brought about in ecumenical relations has, one might presume, after Cardinal Kaspar's recent speech, changed the dynamics of this "special ecumenical territory", or maybe pointed to abolishing the idea completely.
We have entered a new age, I think what we need now are Bishops who are confident in their Catholic identity and able to develop a sense of hope and spirituality in the Church in England. Men who have the courage, vision and holiness to follow the example of their holy predecessors like Augustine, Thomas Becket, Richard Wych, John Fisher and the Marian Bishops; may these holy men pray for us.
Read the whole of Damian's article: Only one man can set that process in motion: Benedict XVI, the greatest theologian to hold the papal office for centuries. We must hope that the special quality of Benedict's thought - its emphasis on the role of beauty in the purification of worship - colours his choice of a successor to Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor; for he would then have to look outside the magic circle.
One is hard put to think of a single bishop of England and Wales who shares Benedict's vision of the Church. Most of them were angered by his election, and his opinion of them is not high. "The English bishops," he told a visiting priest a few years ago, "are the problem." Well, Your Holiness, they are your problem now. England could become a showcase for a Catholic revival based on charismatic preaching and glorious liturgy. But, to achieve that, Pope Benedict may have to set aside his new benevolence and display some of his old ferocity.
9 comments:
It strikes me that to solve the problems of the Church in England our bishops would organise some type of committee meeting.
Saint Charles Borromeo or one of the saint you mentioned would have organised a penitential procession, declared a fast and invoked the Blessed Virgin and the saints in prayer.
I think the Church in this country is doing pretty well. I know several Bishops personally, they are all excellent people, doing a very difficult job. They should have our support.
What we do not want is a return to, what Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor used to refer to as the "Catholic ghetto". Indeed the Church has to be more open to secular society, and more willing to be changed by it. We can't live in the 1550s or even the 1950s, which seems to be where so many of our younger clergy would drag us.
What about the role of women, homosexuals, the divorced and remarried, AIDS, the environment, global capitalism etc. few Bishops seem to address these issues, at least in public, although the progressive ones are at least realise that in the next Pontificate these issues will have to be addressed.
Clive, it is leaking like an old sieve, and half the holes have been made by their Lordships. But then I don't move in those circles.
They have our prayers, they take vast amounts of our parishes money, which they waste. They have our grudging obedience, should they really have our support, for what?
As the next Cardinal we need a man who really believes what the Church has always taught and can infect young people especially with that love.
We also need someone who can do something with young men. Everyone in Church today, apart from the priest seems to be a woman. As a man I feel embarassed being at daily Mass, ladies everywhere, especially on the sanctuary.
It is easier to say what we do not need. We have dwindled down over the past thirty years, which might be part of a general trend within society, but might also be due to our own collective failings. After all, there is no lack of interest in spirituality, nor has there been for the past fifty years, but we have hardly managed to put across the idea that the Catholic Church has something important to say on the subject.
So we need Bishops with many attributes. They need to have a sense of tradition but they also need to be able to read the signs of the times, whilst at the same time having a clear idea of where the Church should be going. One thing they should not do is see themselves as managers, although of course they need to delegate to competent managers and administrators to ensure that resources are best utilised and husbanded.
The problem has been with the appointments - JPII appointed men who made good pastoral leaders who could reach out to leaders of other faiths - but this was at the expense of the Catholic faithful. It's all very well proposing these ecumenical gestures but what does it mean to the man or woman in the pews? To me it gives off the signal that it doesn't really matter what faith you are since we're all good friends now. This is all well and good but the end result has been the increasing numbers of Catholics lapsing from the faith. What we need are bishops who will stand up to the faith, who will respect other faiths but not to the extent that our own faith is diminished or compromised. Oh and Clive - the Catholic Church should seek to change secular society not be changed by it otherwise what is the point of the Church???
First and foremost let us be charitable in our comments.
It seems to a humble outsider that what you need is a combination of Newman and Manning - holiness, orthodoxy ,lucidity, literary skills plus administrative ability and an interest in the secular world. Whoever gets the job will be the de facto leader of Christianity in an increasingly hostile country. He will need to be able to fulfill that task.
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