Chapel Screened Off in St Peter's

Rome Reports runs this video, almost 3 minutes of a screen in St Peter's Basilica, presumably hiding some kind of work. It is front of the Chapel of Saint Sebastian next to the Pieta, which until now has contained the remains Innocent XI who died in 1689.

According to rumour, spread by the French news agency I Media, it is being prepare for the body of  Pope John Paul II once he is beatified.

I must admit I'm not a Canonisation subito fan, my Coptic Orthodox friends will not allow any process until the candidate has been dead for 70 years.

Ordinariate Portal

I seldom highlight new blogs or sites but for those of you interested in the doings and goings on of the Ordinariate the Ordinariate Portal is an invaluable resource. It offers links to stories in the press and on-line.

I found this interview of Fr Marcus Stock, Secretary to our Episcopal Conference by Austen Ivereigh in America fascinating.

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The Excellence of Catholic Schools

Zenit highlights a report on the excellence of our Catholic schools.

In terms of overall effectiveness, 73% of Catholic secondary schools were shown to be outstanding or good, compared to 60% of schools nationally. For primary schools, 74% of Catholic schools were judged outstanding or good compared to 66% nationally.

The report added that these results also reflect social diversity within Catholic schools, as these institutions have the same proportions of children eligible for free school meals as schools nationally.

As well, the Catholic schools showed more ethnic diversity than their national counterparts.

In the report's forward, Stannard stated that "perhaps the most revealing part of the survey is the short section exploring the value added by the schools."

"This clearly shows that our schools do exceptionally well both in terms of objective measures of attainment and when contextual factors such as levels of disadvantage are taken into account," she added.

Stannard continued: "Three findings of the survey are particularly encouraging and should motivate us to engage in a spirit of confident cooperation with our community neighbors.

"The first is the maintenance of high quality from the early years right through the secondary phase of education. The second is the good quality of all aspects of leadership.

"Perhaps most important of all, the third concerns our contribution to the community, which is consistently rated far above average in both primary and secondary phases."

Stannard asserted, "In facing the challenges of education in the 21st century we can confidently confirm that Catholic schools are part of the solution, not the problem."

There is always the danger of "triumphalism".
The problem is not whether our Catholic Schools fulfill the criteria set by the Government but whether they produce disciples of Christ: men and women who value prayer, the sacraments, attendance at Mass and the Word of God, who are capable of building effective families, of nurturing their own children in the faith, of building the Kingdom of God.

Links to the reports can be found here.

Tablet Haemorrhaging Money

Shops seem to be closing all over Brighton, more of my people are unemployed but there is one good thing about the recession, maybe just one The Tablet is haemorrhaging money, according to Ttony - thousands of pounds each week according to the latest accounts it has eventually posted. Admittedly the accounts are pre-recession.
It claims it has a circulation of more than 22,000 copies each week, though in common with other British Catholic papers that probably means that is how many are printed whilst in fact only a small proportion are sold or read. Ttony repeats the claim that the Tablet makes that each copy is read by three people, I have never seen how that can be substantiated, it appeals to diminishing niche market.
Unfortunately it has vast resources laid down from when it was a bastion of mainstream Catholicism.

Assisi One and Assisi Three

The great low points of the reign of Pope John Paul II reign were the stupid "liturgical" blunders, the kissing of the Qur'n as if it were the Book of the Gospels, being exorcised by an Aztec priestess as part of a Pentential Rite, those alone should have Archbishop Marini his head but then the actual low point of all of this was the Assisi (One) the meeting of world religious leaders. It was the the time when the Christian churches of Assisi were despoiled and turned over to pagan worship and the Vicar of Christ identified himself as a fellow traveller with polytheists, deists, shamans and witches.
As a loyal priest I found myself at the time trying to defend the barely indefensible. I did so by suggesting that the Pope alone as the first and foremost world spiritual leader was able call such an assembly and that it was perhaps necessary for all "spiritual leaders" to express some solidarity with one another for the promotion of  "Peace" in the face of growing secularisation and materialism.

Cardinal Ratzinger was the lone member of the curia who broke ranks and publicly criticised the event as being "ill judged". Since becoming Pope he has changed the structures governing the use of the Assisi churches, he has stressed that although Christians may pray alongside non-Christians they may not pray with pagans. Although he seems happy to recite the Psalms and the Old Testament with Jews he is quite clear about the inability of Christians to pray with rather alongside other "faiths".

At the beginning of the year the Pope announced Assisi Three, I was surprised but Benedict's Assisi will be quite different to his predecessors.

The Pope's New Year address to the the Diplomatic Corps clearly spoke of religious freedom, he condemned by name the Pakistani blasphemy laws, he has also called for the right of Christians to build churches and freely worship in Islamic countries. Again and again Benedict stresses the uniqueness of Christ and the Catholic Church the necessity of salvation through Christ and the possibility of other "faiths" to learn from Christianity. The difference between Assisi One and Three is Pope Benedict is charge and calls a spade a spade, and isn't afraid to do so.

This initiative should be seen as a corrective to Assisi One and perhaps a sign of the Pope's confidence that his reforms are actually taking hold of the Church.

No New Ambassador to the Holy See

I caught this in The Telegraph about the continuing absence of the naming of a new British Ambassador the Holy See. Francis Campbell leaves his post at the end of this month.
The suggestion that Ann Widdecombe might have been appointed was a bit of a joke, a retired somewhat combative outspoken politician is hardly going to oil diplomatic wheels. The suggestion that Chris Patten might be willing to combine the job with being Chancellor of Oxford University again seems laughable, I can't imagine the last governor of Hong Kong working with a couple of part time staff supplemented by a handful of volunteers.
Apparently George Edgar will be the interim chargé d'affaires to the Holy See, the problem is that although the Papal visit was a remarkable success there is still a sense that the British do not take the Holy See seriously after Anjoum Noorani's escapades that preceded Patten and Edgar's appointment to oversee the visit.
There were protests from the Secretariate of State a few years ago when the Blair government wanted to make the British Embassy to the Holy See a subsidiary branch of the Embassy to Italy as part of a cost cutting enterprise.