The Rights of People

There is a pastoral letter from our Bishop, Kieran Conry, this weekend, apparently some priests haven’t been reading them. Not an open revolt or even disobedience, I think, but maybe because they haven’t always had much to do with the liturgy, some have been notices for our Diocesan Catechetical Centre, his first few seemed almost deliberately not to mention God or religion.

We have a sound system of course but we do not have machine for playing music or pastoral letters, it had broken down under the previous regime and I haven’t replaced it. An unnecessary expense, as there is no a place for recorded music in the Liturgy and Pastoral Letters should be read, the Priest (or Deacon) is the Bishop’s logothete, not a recording a machine. There should be nothing virtual about the Sacred Liturgy.

I have tried to read his letters. Unfortunately, because the bishop uses a very conversational style, I think the recorded version precedes the written, I do not do them justice, so I have been photocopying them so people can read them at their leisure. We normally have a small group or two who then listen to them on disc and discuss them. References to films he has seen either leave people blank or shocked, I think the reference to the homosexual cowboy film Broken Back Mountain, in this one, might cause shock and leave people as confused as me as to what he is really saying. Not the type of thing I would choose to watch myself, nor suggest anyone went to see.

In his letter the Bishop says that people have a right to hear or to read his pastoral letters. I am glad he said, “read”, it quietens my conscience. Personally I would be too afraid of St Ignatius of Antioch on judgement day acting for the prosecution if I didn’t read them or make them available in some form.

However I am interested in the Rights of God’s People.

When I was a first ordained I was told by a Parish Priest that the only right I had as a Curate was the right to a Christian burial! Not the happiest time in my life.

American friends claim the right to have “open government” by their bishops, not surprising in the light of the cover-ups a large number of bishops over the abuse crisis.
Pope John Paul II said that the faithful have the right to the faith preached to them in all its fullness.
The present Pope has frequently spoken of the rights of the faithful to have the Liturgy celebrated strictly according to the rites of the Church, rather than the personal interpretation of a bishop or priest or community.

People do have a rights, one right is not to be shocked or scandalised or have their faith undermined.

People have the right to know that their priests and bishops share their faith; there used to be that silly adolescent 70s thing where bishops and priests and diocesan employees gave the impression that their faith was lean and sophisticated, and held in contempt, as being superstitious, the faith that asked for devotion and reverence and roots in tradition, which was of course the faith of those paying their salaries.

New Mass Translations

Fr Sean's Church in Shoreham

Fr Sean, Valle Adurni, has just posted the new translations of the Mass, which are being widely circulated in South Africa. Well done Fr Sean, well done Monsignor Bruce Harbert (who used to be a priest of our diocese)
Check them out they are beautiful.



from the Second Eucharistic Prayer

You are indeed the Holy One, O Lord,
you are the wellspring of all holiness.
Therefore, make holy these gifts, we pray,
by the dew of your Spirit,that they may become for usthe Body and Blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
Who, as he was handed overand entered willingly into his Passion,
took bread and, giving thanks, broke it,and gave it to his disciples, saying:
Take this, all of you, and eat of it,for this is my Body,which will be given up for you.
In the same way, when supper was ended,
he took the chalice
and, once more giving you thanks, he gave it to his disciples, saying:
Take this, all of you, and drink from it,
for this is the Cup of my Blood,
the Blood of the new and eternal Covenant;
it will be poured out for you and for all
for the forgiveness of sins.
Do this in memory of me.
The mystery of faith.
We proclaim your death, O Lord,
and profess your resurrectionuntil you come in glory.

Flying Padre

Stanley Kubrick - The Flying Padre, a wonderful piece of 1950's Catholic Americana
saturno tip Holy Whapping

Ann Atkins on BBC Today

Ann Atkins did "Thought for the Day" on "Today" today.

It is a heartbreaking ruling. Natallie Evans can never now have a baby. Her children already exist, in embryo, but she cannot give birth to them without their father's consent, and has exhausted all legal appeal. Her progeny must be destroyed and her body can make no more. This raises numerous questions, the most obvious of which is what skin off his nose would it be for her ex, Howard Johnson, to be generous and relinquish his claims. The lawyers may not be able to give her her children, but he could; and he wouldn't need to lift a finger. Or indeed anything else. But this is a conundrum the rest of us can't solve. Our responsibility is to address other issues. Such as why we give a father no right whatsoever to protect the life of his unborn child (from abortion) but every right to end it (in vitro). Or why we demand more consent than Nature herself: he gave consent enough when the eggs were fertilised, which is all that is traditionally granted a man. Perhaps we should go further back. Something is seriously askew. Lone parenthood is up by three times, in as many decades. Both reformers and conservatives bemoan this. As Polly Toynbee said on this programme yesterday, Almost everybody thinks that the best possible thing is to have two loving parents. While her opponent, David Green, explained, If you take more or less any measure - turning to crime, how well children do in school, whether they commit suicide et cetera - it's better to have two parents. We have more evidence than ever before that children need both mother and father. We also know they're far better off, generally speaking, if those parents are married (for one thing, they're over five times more likely to stay together). And yet marriage has never been less fashionable, nor so many born outside it. Throughout history children have been treated as possessions not people, and this is as true today as ever. The government has just passed a bill which it knows will risk the closure of those adoption agencies that serve the most vulnerable children. Why? To make a political point. However worthy it may be to promote adults' equal rights, it is surely not worth paying for them with children's unequal needs. In May, that same government will propose dropping the requirement to meet the child's need for a father in the provision of IVF. Again, why? To give single women their right to have children too. Let us dream, for a moment, of a world where children were not a right but a privilege; where governments protected the vulnerable not the vote; where we dared insist, before offering aided conception, on the commitment of two parents, both to the child and to each other. We could even give that commitment legal status. And call it - what? - 'marriage'?

Dachau's Priests

The Nazi persecution of the churches was a combination of "political nihilism and ideological fanaticism." They set out to destroy the existing social order and were fanatically determined to create a pure Aryan super race. According to John Conway, "The Nazis' antagonism towards the Churches arose from their intolerance of any compromise with a system of belief that spanned the centuries and embraced all men under a doctrine of equality before God. ... The Nazi radicals were motivated not only by a desire for total control, but an ideological fanaticism that believed it possible to create an ersatz religion of blood and soil." Their mission was to create a secular substitute for Christianity.
Hitler expressed his hatred of the Catholic Church in private dinner conversations. On one occasion he remarked to his dinner guests, "I hate the Jews because they have given that man, Jesus, to the world," and on another, "Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew." Hitler and the Nazi hierarchy were obsessed with the Christian churches. The Catholic Church was especially hated and feared. The recent release of heretofore classified OSS intercepts of Nazi communications reveals the depth of that hatred and fear.
read the whole article

Mit Brennender Sorge

This Passion Sunday was the 70th anniversary of Pius XI's encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge which was smuggled into Germany, secretly printed, and read from all Catholic pulpits throughout Germany in March, 1937, it brought joy to the Jews and deepened the Nazi onslaught against the Church.

Pius wrote:
“Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of Power, or any other fundamental value of the human community–however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things–whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds.” (par. 8).
“None but superficial minds could stumble into concepts of a national God, of a national religion; or attempt to lock within the frontiers of a single people, within the narrow limits of a single race, God, the Creator of the universe, King and Legislator of all nations before whose immensity they are ‘as a drop of a bucket (Isaiah, 40, 15)” (par. 11)

“You will need to watch carefully, Venerable Brethren, [Catholic Hierarchy of Germany]
that religious fundamental concepts be not emptied of their content and distorted to profane use. ‘Revelation’ in its Christian sense, means the word of God addressed to man. The use of this word for the ‘suggestions’ of race and blood, for the irradiations of a people’s history, is mere equivocation. False coins of this sort do not deserve Christian currency. ‘Faith’ consists in holding as true what God has revealed and proposes through His Church to man’s acceptance. It is ‘the evidence of things that appear not’ (Heb. 2. 1). The joyful and proud confidence in the future of one’s people, instinctive in every heart, is quite a different thing from faith in a religious sense. To substitute the one for the other, and demand on the strength of this, to be numbered among the faithful followers of Christ, is a senseless play on words, if it does not conceal a confusion of concepts, or worse.” (par. 23)
“Such is the rush of present-day life that it severs from the divine foundation of Revelation, not only morality, but also the theoretical and practical rights. We are especially referring to what is called the natural law, written by the Creator’s hand on the tablet of the heart (Rom. 2, 14) and which reason, not blinded by sin or passion, can easily read. It is in the light of the commands of this natural law, that all positive law, whoever be the lawgiver, can be gauged in its moral content, and hence, in the authority it wields over conscience. Human laws in flagrant contradiction with the natural law are vitiated with a taint which no force, no power can mend. In the light of this principle one must judge the axiom, that ‘right is common utility,’ a proposition which may be given a correct significance, means that what is morally indefensible, can never contribute to the good of the people. But ancient paganism acknowledged that the axiom, to be entirely true, must be reversed and be made to say: ‘Nothing can be useful, if it is not at the same time morally good’ (Cicero, De Off. 2, 30). Emancipated from this moral rule, the principle would in international law carry a perpetual state of war between nations; for it ignores in national life, by confusion of right and utility, the basic fact that man as a person possesses the rights he holds from God, and which any collectivity must protect against denial, suppression or neglect. To overlook this truth is to forget that the real common good ultimately takes its measure from man’s nature, which balances personal rights and social obligations, and from the purpose of society, which by a give and take process, every one can claim for his own sake and that of others. Higher and more general values, which collectivity alone can provide, also derive from the Creator for the good of man, and for the full development, natural and supernatural, and the realization of his perfection. To neglect this order is to shake the pillars on which society rests, and to compromise social tranquility, security and existence.” (par. 30)

During the last years of his life, Pius XI condemned Nazi and Fascist notions of race, blood, soil, and nation. He referred to the Nazi swastika as “the cross which was not the Cross of Christ” (N.Y. Times, February 12, 1939, IV, p. 3, 7).

Easter in Rome: The Secret Homilies of the Successor of Peter

Sandro Magister speaks of the sermons thaqt draw thousands to hear the Holy Father, he says, "They’re secret, except for those who were able to listen to them in person, while Benedict XVI was pronouncing them. In the "urbi et orbi" message, too, the pope presented much more than a list of countries at war.

The reason for starting this blog was because I wanted my parishioners and others to know what this exceptional man was saying. I haven't had time to download or link most of the Easter sermons but... Here are the complete texts