The Vatican Website announced
Mgr Terence Drainey has been appointed as Bishop of Middlesbrough. So no change really.
Have a look at this about the cathedral. Its very Tesco.
Mgr Terence Drainey has been appointed as Bishop of Middlesbrough. So no change really.THE new Roman Catholic Bishop of Middlesbrough was announced today.
The Right Reverend Monsignor Terrence Drainey was appointed the seventh bishop of Middlesbrough by Pope Benedict XVI.
Mgr Drainey will be ordained on January 25 at St Mary’s Cathedral, Coulby Newham.
He will replace Bishop John Crowley, who resigned due to ill health earlier this year after almost 15 years.
Mgr Drainey said: “I personally thank the Holy Father for appointing me to Middlesbrough and for allowing me to serve the church as a bishop here.
“I realise I tread on holy ground here where many great and saintly ones have gone before me. How could I not remember that especially today, the feast of St Hilda of Whitby?”
The Monsignor’s current work in the seminary at Ushaw College, Durham, demands he remain there for “a little while longer” before being ordained as Bishop of Middlesbrough.
“In the meantime I ask for prayers: prayers for your former Bishop, John Crowley, and those who have undertaken the task of running the diocese since his resignation was accepted.”
Terence Patrick Drainey was born in Manchester in August 1949. He went to Ushaw College as a student. He was later sent to the Royal English College Valladolid in Spain. He was ordained for the diocese of Salford in 1975.
He was appointed to the position of President of St Cuthbert’s College, Ushaw - a seminary for the training of Roman Catholic priests. In 2006 he was made a papal chaplain.
32 comments:
The diocese of Middlesbrough is going to cease to exist in 10 years time.
What is the Pope thinking? Did no one report what this man is up to?
Sometimes God says "No" to my most devout prayers.
JARay
St Tesco's indeed! At least in our diocese of Arundel and Brighton we have a cathedral which looks like a cathedral and dominating the hill as it does it is an impressive landmark.
Yesterday I attended the Requiem Mass there for Archbishop Maurice Couve de Murville - known fondly as Father Couve when he was here in Brighton in the 1960s.
May he rest in peace.
Are you sure? Can't find it on the Vatican website. I'm doubly interested, as I live in the diocese of Middlesbrough, and I was expecting to interview Msgr Drainey in a couple of weeks for an article on the Ushaw bicentenary.
Have been trying to find out more about the new bishop but unsuccessful so far.
Ottaviani has made me curious - what 'has he been up to?'
Ben - it's announced here on the Bishops of E and W website.
http://www.catholic-ew.org.uk/cn/07/071117a.htm
This does not augur well. He is young enough to be around for a long time. We need to re-double our prayers for the Church in this country.
Oh dear,
Well, looking at the pictures of the new cathedral, I have to say I feel sorry for the new bishop.
Thank you for the information about the new Bishop though i cannot see from this why people are not pleased with his appointment.
Interesting to see the comment that he is too young - people used to complain that the hierarchy were all too old!
How many posters on here know why the original Cathedral in Middlesbrough was demolished? How many are aware of the financial situation in Middlesbrough? Knock, knock, knock any bishop who is not a rebel.
Give the man a chance, please!
It's on the Vatican website. See: http://212.77.1.245/news_services/bulletin/news/21129.php?index=21129&lang=ge#NOMINA%20DEL%20VESCOVO%20DI%20MIDDLESBROUGH%20(INGHILTERRA)
What is going on with the Bishops in this country?! Another "middle management" yes man.
All we can do is pray the grace of consecration works wonders on him.
Mgr Drainey is a perfectly nice man and no doubt a faithful priest but it is a very sad day. At a time when we need a "Churchill" we're given another "Tony Blair".
God have mercy on us!
Are we really that sinful in England that we don't merit at least ONE good Bishop?! Even during the terrible times of the reformation we had one Saintly Bishop ~ the glorious St. John Fisher. America is having good Bishops appointed left, right and centre! The brilliant Archbishop Raymond Burke, Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz, Bishop Robert W. Finn, to name but a few. Why are we still getting the dregs?!!
Pelerin asked “I cannot see from this why people are not pleased with his appointment.”
Pelerin, this is the man who recently said ““Some foreign priests working in Britain tend to be too dogmatic about the church’s moral rightness on just about everything. That’s not how we do things here. This course shows how we deal with a whole range of issues affecting Catholics, including the role of women, divorce, the lay ministry and homosexuality.” These are hardly the words of a conservatively minded Bishop designate are they? If he can play fast and lose with morality, what’s to stop him having the same attitude towards articles of Faith?
O Lord God of hosts, how long wilt thou be angry against the prayer of thy servant?
How long wilt thou feed us with the bread of tears: and give us for our drink tears in measure?
Thou hast made us to be a contradiction to our neighbours: and our enemies have scoffed at us.
O God of hosts, convert us: and show thy face, and we shall be saved.
Convert us, O God our saviour: and turn off thy anger from us.
Wilt thou be angry with us for ever: or wilt thou extend thy wrath from generation to generation?
Jesus, Mercy! Mary, Help!!
well ? maybe His Holiness is putting all his enemies in one basket ?
Or it's a minnow to keep the barking seals complacent.
But Westminster ?
Rochey has no chance irrespective of what His Eminence wishes....
I don't understand why the monsignor got the 'job', but at least he's not in a position to affect the trainee priests in Ushaw any more with his 'unusual' agendas and initiatives.
Oh jb really - One great thing about catholicism is that there is always hope ! How often have things within the the church died only to be resurred and revitalised because Truth - the Person of Christ - subsists within ?
I've got a decent Bishop in Peter Doyle [I'm terrified he's too trusting of some of his clerics though] but you never know - miracles do happen ? maybe Mgr Drainey will have some damascene conversion and start acting like a priest once he gets the crozier ? We can always pray he becomes 'beckett-ised' by divine grace ?
Friends, can't we just trust in the Holy Spirit? If we believe that Pope truly to be the successor of Saint Peter, and he - along with his college of Bishops - have discerned that Mgr Drainey is the man for the job, let us trust in that!
Fr. Ray,
I understand that the first part of Mgr. Drainey's statement was edited before release as it exceeded the regulation word-count, but here it is in full (the edits are in square brackets):
"[Dear sisters and brothers in Christ,] I personally thank [the Magic Circle for rigging the terna and slapping it in front of] the Holy Father [when he was very busy with something else and didn't have his reading glasses to hand. The Bishops Conference of England & Wales would like to express its relief to Pope Benedict] for appointing me [and not one of those Ratzinger Fan Club types] to Middlesbrough and for allowing me [even though I'm hardly a Summorum Pontificum enthusiast] to serve the church as a bishop here [as that's not the way we do things in England]."
:-)
The facts demand recognition that Benedict XVI is not making good appointments. He began his reign with the disastrous appointment of Archbishop (now Cardinal) Levada as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a man whose doctoral dissertation was a defence of proportionalism (an approach to moral reasoning condemned by John Paul II in Veritatis Splendor). There is far too much adulation of Benedict. What the Church badly needs is reform of the Curia, reform of the system of Papal Nuncios, and the appointment of good bishops. Instead Benedict is devoting his time to writing volume 2 of his work on Jesus of Nazareth. We had a surfeit of papal publications under JPII and poor governance, and we are getting more of the same.
As long as we have the kind of Nuncio in this country who is readily co-opted by the Conference of Bishops (the story of Barbarito, Puente, and the present one), then we will get bad episcopal appointments. The Nuncios have for decades been aiding and abetting the replication of mediocrity in the episcopate. Benedict knows from his time at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith the serious problems that afflict the Church in this country but there is no evidence that he is taking a serious personal interest in addressing them. Instead, he is doing what he is most comfortable doing: writing.
I join JB in his prayer for the Church in this country. The situation is grim.
Let us pray for the new bishop. That the grace of his forthcoming ordination will kepp him faithful to the Pope and Catholic Faith.
Msgr Drainey emailed me today, in relation to matters unconnected with his appointment. 'Thanks for your prayers,' he wrote. 'I need them.'
I wouldn't be bishop of Middlesbrough for a million quid. Let's just pray for the man, shall we?
He looks too much like Declan Lang with that casual pose and blue clerical shirt...
Middlesbrough is one of the most run down dioceses in one of the most run down parts of England. The Iron Coast is a mass of urban blight. Anybody who goes there needs support rather than criticism. In terms of influence, few of those dreary northern Catholic dioceses count. Their energy goes into keeping what is left of Catholic life together and the bishops don't have time to strike attitudes or adopt policies that are meaningless to people outside the hermetic, self-referential world of the bloggosphere
.
Fr. Ray,
(Father? Bishop??) Anonymous posting at 10.44AM on 19th November makes the fair point that Mgr Drainey is now tasked with leading a diocese in a deprived area, without the vast resources of the BMW belt in the South of England, and he deserves support. I agree. All the more so as his predecessor's episcopal ministry ended in disarray, leaving Middlesbrough diocese rudderless and Mgr Drainey now having to pick up the pieces.
I would just add, however, that the new bishop will make his ministry much more fruitful spiritually if he seeks to exercise it in full union with Rome -- and avoids, to use Anonymous's own terms -- "striking attitudes or adopting policies" which accentuate the estrangement of English Catholicism from the Universal Church.
May Mgr Drainey always be mindful, when exercising his office of bishop, that he has been appointed by Pope Benedict XVI.
It's quite amazing. When I studied in Rome I handed the CDF a copy of Drainey's address to seminarians which contradicted the Holy Father's guidelines on the entrance of homosexuals to seminaries. Seems that it didn't get beyond the American monsignor from the diocese of Lincoln that accepted it. Very sad indeed.
rose of york -
I don't think anyone is asking for a rebel. Au contraire - anyone who is unambiguous in his fidelity to the Holy Father and the teaching of the Church willl do.
On the face of it, this doesn't look good, especially in the light of the bishop-elect's recent comments about the Ushaw course designed to train priests from abroad not to be too insistent about Catholic dogma. Nevertheless, since he was appointed a chaplain to the Holy Father last year, he cannot be entirely unknown; perhaps the Holy Father knows something we don't.
Personally, I am inclined to think that, even when the Holy Father doesn't look as if he knows what he is doing - he knows what he is doing. I think our job is to trust him - and pray.
We can always take comfort from the fact that, when Bishop-elect Drainey takes office, his oath of obedience to the Holy Father will be fresh in his mind.
Fr. Ray,
Definitely my final comment on this subject. Regarding the mixed reactions to Terry Drainey, I am very mindful of how my heart sank when I read the following about the Bishop of Northampton, Peter Doyle, just after he was installed:
“Peter Doyle was ordained priest by Bishop Derek Worlock in 1968…In Portsmouth Diocese he was a member of the Council of Priests and since 2001 a member of the Bishop's Council and a Vicar General…Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor was the principal consecrator at the Mass [of installation], assisted by Bishop Crispian Hollis and Bishop Declan Lang: the Cardinal and Bishop Lang, like Bishop Doyle, were at one time priests of Portsmouth diocese…Bishop Doyle thanked all for coming to the Mass and expressed his strong desire to develop good relations with other Christians and the wider community.”
My (prejudiced) reaction: “Worlock + Portsmouth diocese + Hollis + Lang + “wider community” = modernist/ Hollis clone. Ratzinger’s just rubber-stamped him.”
But from all that I have heard about this new bishop since, it seems I was completely wrong. Which just goes to show…
When I hear news like this, it strikes home to me that the only reason I remain Catholic is because its true.
How very sad that despite the truth, we have to put up with so many inept bishops.
Why cant we even have just ONE bishop we can be proud, just ONE. Sweet Jesus, is that too much to ask for?
Until Pope Benedict appoints decent bishops for the UK, we are going to remain in the dreadful rut we are in. We need HOLY and OBEDIENT BISHOPS!!!!
I have just read the comments by some regarding the diocese of Middlesbrough. Some have felt themselves righteous enough to pass unfair and unfounded comments on the appearance of our cathedral and the appointment of our new bishop Terry Drainey. These people need to to question themselves as both human beings and Catholics. Our Bishop elect needs prayers and encouragement as he prepares for leadership of our diocese. Don't judge the appearance of the outside of our cathedral but the activity within it and the people that worship there. Your unkind comments further fuel the great North/South divide. Stop being so stuck up on yourselves. Come and visit our wonderful diocese for yourselves!! James of Middlesbrough
Middlesbrough Cathedral is one of the most beautiful religious buildings in the country. Visit it and I will be proved right. Bishop Drainey's appointment is a good one for the diocese. He is a northerner, a bishop for the people and priests and I think he will do an excellent job. I look foward to meeting him. He will continue to build where Bishop Crowley left of. Welcome!
I would just support the last two comments. I attended the ordination of Bishop Terence in Middlesbrough Cathedral, presided over by Archbishop Kelly of Liverpool - and it was one of the most profound acts of worship I have every attended.
Bishop Terry came across as incredibly sincere in his ordination promises and in his informal words at the end.
By the way, Middlebrough Cathedral is a truly beautiful building - designed so everyone can see clearly. The Diocese brings together the cities of Middlesbrough, York, and Hull as well as much the Yorkshire Moors and Wolds - it is a lovely part of the world. Many parishes in the Diocese are growing, levels of giving are realistic, there are numerous well-supported study groups and plenty if lay involvement. Whilst (as everywhere) there are difficulties in terms of the declining numbers of priests, there is a really vibrant sense that people are committed to the faith. I am sure Bp Terry is the right person to take us forward.
call yourselves roman catholics.. half of you have no compassion or love in you. its a disgrace! give Bishop drianey a break ! i'd like to see some of you dogmatic freaks do a better job!
last comment,
"i'd like to see some of you dogmatic freaks do a better job!"
Most of us would!
I had the pleasure of meeting our new Bishop recently and was delighted to find that he is real man of the people, we are fortunate indeed to have him as our bishop. may God bless him and all of us as we try to make our catholic community a peaceful and prayerful community, a caring community. Mrs. A. Murphy, from Middlesbrough
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