One of the high points of last year for me was the first Colloquium of the Confraternity Catholic Clergy in Reading, we had about 60 priests turn up, with some really excellent talks from Bishop Mark Davies and Mgr Andrew Wadsworth. The rather impressive Bishop Geoffrey Jarrett, from Australia also attended.
This year's Colloquium promises to be even better, I understand our Nuncio had wanted to come but the was a clash of dates, but Archbishop Augustine Di Noia from the CDW and the newly ordained Bishop Philip Egan of Portsmouth is coming to speak.
If you are a member of the Confraternity book here. The dates are 23/24th October. If you are a priest and your not a member, join: its only £20 and the cost of the Colloquium is £40.
Over the last year the Confraternity has been steadily growing so it is expected that the numbers this year should go up to about 100, for the most part the younger clergy of England and Wales.
10 comments:
Thank you for your correction Trisagion, you are of course right.
"newly ordained"
Newly consecrated surely?
A letter in this week's Tablet describes the CCC in the following terms
Dubious Purposes
Notebook (25 August) informs us that Philip Egan, Bishop of Portsmouth, will be addressing the British Branch of the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy meeting at Reading in October; that he has been appointed to the see for being "an outspoken defender of church teaching"; that he hold the encyclical Humane Vitae to be "infallible teaching"; that prior to his appointment he was vicar general and close collaborator of Mark Davies, Bishop of Shrewsbury; who, states Notebook, is " a rising star of the conservative wing of the Church in England and Wales".
The plans and purposes of this confraternity should be made known as widely as possbile, openly debated and wherever necessary vigorously opposed. Being in his diocese, I am able to get a very good idea of the mentality of the confraternity from Bishop Davies' own Shrewsbury Voice. It is reaction itself. It stands for a return of the Church to how it was before the Second Vatican Council. It holds to an excessive, hence highly unbalanced, interpretation of the role and power of the papacy which has no foundation in biblical and patristic sources. This is the pool from which episcopal appointments are now, and will be, made. It is totally unable to distinguish between its version of ecclesiology, the sacraments, male and female relationships, and so on from what is also now on offer, and has been for many centuries, in the Universal Church. The confraternity is a gathering of the like minded who root themselves in the nineteenth century and pre-Second World War Europe. It has influence, and its influence will grow. It has to be challenged, by whatever way it does it, by the rest of the hierarchy itself; by the clergy and with the equal involvement of the Catholic laity which is now anything but the subservient layer of the Church which the confraternity would like to return it to.
Michael Knowles
Congleton, Cheshire
Sounds as if I ought to join it!
Br Richard Duncan
The Oratory
Birmingham
Conchur, Altars, virgins, chalices, churches are consecrated, bishops are now ordained. Western mediaeval theology saw priesthood as an "urs" sacrament of order with episcopacy as a consecration (making holy/sacred).
The teaching of the first Millennium is there are three distinct orders and men are "ordained" not consecrated to them.
Brother Richard,
Yes the Tablet is doing its normal, "let's rubbish mainstream Catholicism" thing.
The CCC I am sure would welcome any priest with mainstream views.
The CCC sounds like just what we need in this country.
Given the nonsense in the 'Tablet' (which, thank goodness, has few readers from what I am told), what are the chances of a 3rd Order-type of structure for lay people wishing to show support to the priests (and bishops!) of the CCC?
Monica,
Yes you can become a lay associate, see here:
http://www.confraternityccb.org.uk/CCCB/Membership_files/A4%20Confraternity%20application2%20110809-1.pdf
Having read this Tablet letter, I think the “hypothesis” of a post-Vatican II Modernist Reformation in the Church might well be upgraded to a “theory”?
I am appalled by this attack on Bishop elect Egan. Living as I do in the Portsmouth Diocese where the Tablet is well supported I beleive every faithful lay catholic there should ensure the Tablet is no longer on sale and any copes held are destroyed.
This is cool. Maybe the laity can have a novena or one day prayer and fasting for this meeting. Could this be the source of future bishops as well?
When will the Tablet disappear?
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