Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Bishop revolt!

I don't know what the outcome of the Synod will be, I don't know if the Holy Father is playing a subtle hand allowing those who have moved beyond Jesus and the the Church's teaching to reveal themselves and then confronting with the full clarity of the Gospel, I like to hope but I don't think my hope is based on much, more wishful thinking than hope.

What is apparent is the divergence between the failing contaminated Churches with nothing but, as in Germany, money in the bank, and other parts of the world and where the Churches are rich in martyrs, young people, vocations and committed lay people and zealous pastors. In fact the fault-lines are precisely those that Kasper identified, the strong Churches are those of Africa and the East, those he doesn't want to listen to.

What fills me with dread is the feeling that really what Pope Francis wants is for the Church to get into a civil partnership with contemporary society to the point where it looses sight of the one to whom it supposed to be 'the bride'. It is adultery in its broadest sense that worries me.
Rather than the Gospel challenging 'this adulterous generation' the leaders of the Church seem to be dancing the tango with Salome and calling out for John the Baptist's head with Herodias.

Coming from a diocese where, rather than being thought a hypocrite, the ex-bishop tailored his preaching and teaching, and ultimately the direction of the diocese to fit his own flawed 'life-style choices'. I am wary of the Church's leadership, if it isn't deeply rooted in what the Second Vatican Council demanded: Scripture and Tradition. The 'gay lobby' appears to have taken control of the Church and until the Pope himself comes out with clear teaching, as Cdl Burke demands, to all appearances he seems to be at the very centre of that lobby.

I was speaking to a convert recently who said, 'this isn't the Church I joined', I had to tell her she was wrong, this is the Church as it has always been, the only difference is that for the first time in her history the Pope has allowed himself to be seen to be on the side of those who wish to dismantle everything we have known to be true. Apparently Cdl Marx has been going round the Synod expressing regret that the Synod Fathers appear to be too attached to Tradition than the will of the Pope but then someone else said but this is exactly as it was in the time of Paul VI, who was deceived by Abp Buginini, who went into the aula crying, Papa vult!

The revelations that Cdl Erdo didn't write the relatio,  to which he signed his name, which Cdl Mueller had described as 'unworthy, scandalous and totally false' and that actually the 'gay lobbyist' Abp Forte did write the most controversial portion or at least he inserted it for a friend, show that the very secrecy means that the guardians of the guards have no part to play. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?  Bishops are indeed accountable to God, even if they don't believe in him (which I suspect could be true in not a few instance), they are also supposed to be accountable to the Apostolic See more immediately but more importantly to their people and clergy. A Synod before the modern era was always a prayerful 'liturgical' gathering, and consequently was public, as Cdl Mueller says people have a right to hear or read what their Bishop has said and they have a grave duty to hold them to account.

As I finish writing this, the Bishops, God bless them, have revolted, Marco Tosatti:

Erdo took the floor, implicitly distancing himself from the report that bore his name, and saying that if that “disceptatio” had been made public, then the others of the Circulo Minores ought to be made public.
His speech was followed by an avalanche from many others along the same line, underscored by thunderous applause.
The Secretary of the Synod, Card. Balidisseri, was watching the Pope, as if in search of advice and lights, and the Pope remained silent and very serious.

Kasper, A German of the 1940s?

 
Fr Z has this up, an interview with Cardinal Kasper, it is shocking, worthy of a German of the 1940's!

It has been said that [Pope Francis] added five special rapporteurs on Friday to help the general rapporteur, Cardinal Peter Erdo. Is that because he’s trying to push things through according to his wishes?
I do not see this going on in the Pope’s head. But I think the majority of these five people are open people who want to go on with this. The problem, as well, is that there are different problems of different continents and different cultures. Africa is totally different from the West. Also Asian and Muslim countries, they’re very different, especially about gays. You can’t speak about this with Africans and people of Muslim countries. It’s not possible. It’s a taboo. For us, we say we ought not to discriminate, we don’t want to discriminate in certain respects.
But are African participants listened to in this regard?
No, the majority of them [who hold these views won’t speak about them].
They’re not listened to?
In Africa of course [their views are listened to], where it’s a taboo.
What has changed for you, regarding the methodology of this synod?
I think in the end there must be a general line in the Church, general criteria, but then the questions of Africa we cannot solve. There must be space also for the local bishops’ conferences to solve their problems but I’d say with Africa it’s impossible [for us to solve]. But they should not tell us too much what we have to do. 

Kasper has been, or at least claims to be the Pope's mouthpiece, does this reflect the Holy Father's thoughts? Let us pray it doesn't. If it does, we have very serious problems.

I am really am quite disgusted. It seems to indicate two Churches, not One that Christ established.

Its not me, its the 'System"

Trying to follow the 'secret' Synod through Vatican press releases is not too easy but it strikes me that those Bishops from failing Churches want change or rupture, those Bishops from strong vigorous Churches want continuity.
Could it perhaps be that the Bishops themselves are the fault, and rather like young students of the 1970s many of them once were they are blaming the 'system' rather than themselves for their failure to teach the faith.

The German Bishops, the leaders of the putsch and those who seem to be following them to change pastoral practice are hardly shining beacons of evangelical zeal, whereas the African Bishops and those from Easter Europe, the Middle and Far East are often are.

...and if you haven't watched Cardinal Burke's recent interview you can do so now.

Wobbly Church: what does it mean to be Catholic today?

I suspect Paul VI was the last Italian Pope, if we discount the short reign of JPI; it strikes me he had Italian virtues and vices, a touch of 'Futurism" and a bit too prone to trust those who would betray him and not a very good organiser.

St John Paul II was Polish philosopher, so Polish in fact some suggest his encyclical are in part only decipherable to someone with an understanding of his brand of philosophy.

Benedict XVI was a German, a Bavarian, so anxious to avoid dictatorship that he appointed his enemies to key positions, to the point that his Papacy fell apart.

Francis is an Argentinian who has witnessed so much bad government, he is conscious of the dangers and seems to want to avoid the failure of his predecessor with a neuralgic fervour .

I am sure this poor summary but my point is that the Church in the last 50 years has wobbled from one point to another reflecting particular the concerns of Popes. Presumably when we have an African or an Asian Pope it going to wobble even more. Nowadays I meet priests who supported Benedict's liturgical initiatives and now have no time for them. They were Benedictines, they have become Franciscans. In a sense they are 'loyal Catholics', but with each Papacy they change, and will continue to change. Under Benedict they fought Relativism, under Francis they tolerate it.  We see that in parishes, a change of priest, often a drastic change of direction, the result is rarely growth, and often serious confusion, a loss of faith that results in lapsation. In the past the Pope was distant figure, who had no impact on the lives of the faithful but when the Papacy is writ large, in fact huge as this Papacy seems to be, and if the next Pope and the one after that are equally huge, and if the contrast between Popes is so great, can merely being 'in Communion' with Pope be the guarantor of Catholicism? For some already being in Communion with Francis means no longer being in Communion with Benedict, or Pius or Leo. The Petrine ministry belongs to the See of Peter, presumably, rather than to the individual who occupies that See. Teaching might not change but its presentation seems to be moving with revolutionary violence, that risks shaking the Church to pieces. The most affected are those who could be termed 'Conservative Catholics'. Trads hold on to Tradition, Liberals to Liberalism but when the tree is shaken so violently what do the Conservatives hold onto, are they going to be swept away in the tsunami?

Even for  Liberals there is problem, what holds them in the Church? Is it that the Church somehow does good, gives aid and education, produces an environment where 'human flourishing'', to use a catch phrase, takes place? We are really talking about 'cultural Catholics', united to the Church by 'works' rather than faith in Jesus Christ and his teaching? That might work for a generation or two, but in the Church there aren't many young liberals, they have all joined Greenpeace or become Feminists or are campaigning against fracking or for LGBTetc rights. The cultural ties and folk memory that bound their grandparents to the Church do not bind them.

I really am beginning to think that the Papacy, which Vatican II saw as the unitative, if it becomes innovative becomes self-destructive. The very purpose of the Papacy is to conserve that which was handed on to it. In the first millennium the faith of the City of the Two Apostles stood still whilst the world revolved, its lack of innovation made it the touchstone of orthodoxy during the Arian and Iconoclastic crisis and enabled it to be the memory of the Tradition of the whole Church. If the Church of Rome becomes the source of innovation can it also be the touchstone of unity? If not where can we find that unity, which after all was promised us by Christ? Can it exist outside of unity with Rome? The answer Orthodoxy and 'ultra-Catholics' come up with is that it exists within the Tradition itself, are ordinary Catholics going to come up with the same answer?

Obsessed by clarity?

One Eastern, Orthodox friend wrote to me recently and said, "You Latins are so obsessed with clarity you lose sight of God". It is what I feel about the Synod, we are trying to clarify what might be best left unclear. Providing we have clarity about what we believe, how we put that into practice is best left to local pastors, adapting practice to local needs. It is our scholastic Aristotelian heritage that draws us to carefully categorise everything we do.

Yes, it is important we address the great gulf between the Magisterium and what is actually taught in diocese and believed and practiced by the people. Reflecting on the words of the Australian couple who spoke of welcoming their homosexual son and his companion for Christmas dinner, I am sure Pope Francis would be proud of me, I've never turned anyone away, nor actually do I know any priest who would, I think this is one of those straw-priests 'Fr Nasty' who the Pope so often presents who doesn't baptise some one who doesn't fit certain rigid categories. In fact the only place I know where this happens is Germany, where if you don't pay Church tax, your children are not baptised and your body is left unburied. What I find difficult is warning a son that certain sexual practices might endanger not only his and his friend's spiritual health but their physical health too. Like many parents today we want to avoid conflict, even if in a real loving family, truth and frankness is necessary and welcome.

The more I hear from the Synod, the more anxious I become, I was interested in what Father Hunwicke had to say about secrecy and the Synod. Are we in the midst of a great act of Romanisation? I do fear we are stoking up two opposing factions that will never be reconciled. Are we heading to a civil war?

Every act of the Church is though not necessarily 'a sacrament' it is 'sacramental'. The old priest who taught Church history at my seminary, occassionally would say things like, "for all his brilliance St Thomas was the great curse of the Western Church", what he meant, I think, was that by defining and clarifying St Thomas moved the focus of the Church. In that sense he marks the separation of East and West. By tightly defining the sacraments, limiting them to seven we lost sense of other sacramental acts, for example we focus on the sacrament of Marriage and ignore the once sacramental acts leading to it and following from it, for example the rites that once surrounded betrothal, or the exchange of dowry and marriage contract, the blessing of the newly married or yet to be married's bed or hearth, or the grace said at the wedding breakfast or the blessing of the cake. St Thomas focused us on the moon and made us forget the stars.

The Church today stresses Mass and Communion, rather than Liturgy as a whole. The 1972 Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults in a way was an attempt to redress the balance, and to move the Church to regaining a sense of mission rather than simply serving it existing members. I am not overly fond of 1970's arguements, they are tedious and 'churchy' but one that possibly we should return to is the question of Mission and/or Maintainence. If you are going to evangelise, processions, devotions, discussions, eating and drinking, or education might well preceed any thought of Mass, in the same way in most countries building a school often preceeded building a Church.

RCIA, which I never tire of arguing is a series of Rites, not a course, reflects the situation of the first half of the first millennium where the Church consisted of people who belonged to it by degree, from those who are friendly towards it or receive help, to those who actively sought membership and were enquirers, hearers and catechumens, who were the majority, to those were actually communicating members, through to those who had a ministerial role or hieratic role through to the bishop who is the locus of Communion. Significantly it also contained penitents, who had lost and hoped to regain their place within the community. It was a Church of 'gradualism', a Church of those who gradually approached Communion with Christ, expressed in Holy Communion but ultimately expressed in the Communion of Saints and the Communion of the Church throughout the world, the Communion of Bishops.



ADDED LATER
I have just had a lady ring my door bell and ask, if her memorial service could take place here, She wants to  write her will. She has not been baptised, she doesn't want anything contrary to the faith, quite what her relatives might want I don't know. She has goodwill but her real reason is her mother had her Requiem here thirteen years ago.
I wasn't quite sure what to say to her, especially as she reads this blog!

Immigration/Emigration

 
I was reading Tim Stanley writing about the Clacton by-election, I was struck by his comments on immigration. I hope both immigration and emigration are are discussed by the Synod, I am sure both issues are close to the Pope's heart, both touch on Catholic social teaching, both go back to the ancient stories of the Bible. The ancient creed of Israel begins, 'My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there...'.

One of our present day truths is that without immigration Europe will collapse. I welcome the kind generous support I see from Filipinos and eastern Europeans who work in our geriatric wards and nursing homes, most have faith and their faith brings a humanity to what can be a barren environment. More than half of those who come to Mass here are Polish immigrants and there is a large proportion of Slovakians and of the Europeans as well. If ever we implement 'devolution max' and Brighton becomes a city-state I suspect we will be be a Muslim controlled city, rather than a Gay city, as most of the immigrants are from the middle east, not a few are Coptic Christians, and we beginning to see Syrians and the other victims of ISIS beginning to arrive. I am pleased that Brighton Voices In Exile, operates out of my house and uses our parish premises. Incidentally they need money!


Am I pro-immigration? Well I am pro-immigrant but every story of immigration is also one of emigration, of the break up of families, of the search for work and in many cases the age old search for food and peace. One of the consequences in Europe of contraception is that we simply aren't reproducing ourselves, we are dependent on immigration. An Italian or Spanish child will inevitably end up by having to pay taxes to support at least six elderly relatives: his two parents and his two grandparents children, if he doesn't  someone else will, often the immigrant who is willing to take the job he is unable or unwilling to take. Immigrants are a comparatively flexible workforce, having left their homeland they are willing to move to wherever work can be found. If they are poor enough or desperate enough, they have left spouses and children behind, like so many Filipino immigrants, in order to send money home. Here, often is another story of broken families, or at least of families without mother and father.

One of the other factors about an immigrant workforce is that we can choose the best from those educated in the first place by a struggling societies, we can harvest a third world country for their graduates and leave without. I remember being told that in one African country there were less than 20 psychiatric professional, at funeral a few days later, I met several working in this country for the NHS. Obviously here they had the facilities to work effectively, and here they received the training they wanted and needed but there is sense in which we mine the third world and poorer European countries for the brightest and best educated, as some multi-national corporation might mine them for bauxite or iron ore, consequently these countries are left the poorer.

Catholic social teaching reminds us that we are our brother's keeper, that our common humanity is actually more important than our national borders, that we have a duty to come to the aid of all our brothers and sisters. The bodies of those floating in the sea off of Lampedusa or immigrants flooding into Southern Europe is something that has to be dealt with. National governments might well be tempted to increase border security or to deal harshly with immigrants in order to discourage others but the Christian response has always been to improve the environment from which they come, to educate, to deepen justice, to strengthen the family. Document like Populorum Progressio or Gaudium et Spes, though in some senses problematic and often treated with contempt by those of a certain political hue nevertheless are an authentic part of the Church's Magisterium.

Not Cowards but English

I was asked to take part in a radio programme which was broadcast on Thursday night on Radio 4 about the Synod. I spent a pleasant quarter of an hour talking to the producer/researcher (?) 'off the record'. I think he said he had spoken to thirty or so clergy who like me had misgivings about the whole thing, as well trends within the Church but none of us were willing to speak 'on the record'.

My initial reaction was, 'aren't we a lot of cowards' but on reflection I think we are just English. We are used to muddling through, we like muddling through, it iis a cultural thing, that is why we don't even have something as vulgar as a Constitution. The only cleric who did speak, not that I actually listened that closely, was that quintessential Irish Cardinal, Cormac Murphy O'Connor, who I love but who like the horse trader he is set out his usual string of elderly windy nags.

What I really am beginning to resent are men with 'ideas' (Francis' ideologues?) but who never seem concerned about Christ or the Gospel or holiness or ultimately Eternal Life, who turn the Church into a debating chamber. I hate their squabbles, I detest their clever solutions. The spiritual life is about muddling through, the muddle is the wound of concupiscence, I just wish we had men who recognise the muddle for what it is and point to Christ as our hope but no, it is about clever schemes to deal with the previous clever schemes that have got us into the mess we are already in. Why do so many of our Bishops and senior clergy sound like Enda Kenny or Nick Clegg rather than Christ? Why the strong reek of the politician?

Naturally I am jaded by the recent events in my own diocese but after only a week I detect attitudes have changed, hurt has moved from our ex-bishop, let me simply say he should not have been appointed, pray for him. I blame the good old magic circle, which in reality is more like a web and it is the spider in the middle who will I suspect will be the ultimate recipient of anger. What stinks is that it is about all power, and factions and so very little about Christ. In future I hope the Nuncio actually makes sure he asks such simple questions as: do you believe? and, are you willing to follow the discipline of the Church? A question I suspect which was of little concern in the Venerable English College and  other seminaries, and amongst senior prelates for decades. The preferred question was: do you belong to my faction? As Pope Francis might say it is about 'careerism', that is on the days on which he doesn't show favour to yet another careerist, but it is so endemic in the Church, the poor man can't avoid it. Incidentally, yes, we all knew about the rumours but consoled ourselves that they were only rumours. We trusted those who appointed him, we trusted Cormac our former bishop, the then Nuncio, Archbishop Puente and Rome.

I think we English actually find politics, including Church politics, rather distasteful - which is why we have had so many foreign (Scottish) Prime Ministers: Cameron, Brown, Blair, Hume, MacMillan, even why we have tended to import foreign monarchs Germans, Scots, Welsh. Yes, yes I am being frivolous, my tongue is definitely in my cheek but I think there is something very English in despising public controversy and thinking those who take part in it as being just short of beneath contempt, which is why we eventually dismiss and despise our Prime Ministers like inept servants.

The politicking and partisanship of the Synod seems distasteful to my sensibilities, public squabbles are for foreigners not for the English. South Americans might well have revolutions, North Americans their powerful capitalit barons with unlimited political influence, Germans their putsches, Italians vendettas, but we English just like to muddle through.There is something grossly unpleasant about dirty washing being seen in public or Cardinals behaving like fish wives and washer women or worse still, bragging about their influence and whose ear they have in their back pocket - that is the ultimate crime for us English which some have never learnt - but that is the nature of a Synod and of most clerical gatherings.

Standby for a great deal more of wrangling, daftness, and horse dealing but ultimately in the final document the Kasperite and anti-Kasperite faction will have reach some kind of agreed statement in the final Synod document. In some cases the medicine can be worse than cure and the big question is can the Church's leadership hold it together or will unity be so damaged that we end up as some kind of federated Church, much like it looks as the once United Kingdom will become under the Cameroons or the Milibanders.

Fragmentation is in the air!
And while mud wrestling goes on in public what really matters is going on in back rooms with sleight of hand by worldly men.

Eucharistic Elephant

Just a passing thought: there is a gulf between pastoral practice and Church teaching. There always has been; remember St Augustine commenting on people reverencing the sun before entering the Church? He was willing to tolerate it, believing that it was his responsibility to persuade them to turn to Christ.

Well I suppose, I suspect I do not know, that many of those who come to Holy Communion are receiving unworthily, it is priests and the Christian community's responsibility to change behaviour, to 'sell' holiness to those disinclined to it. "I teach men to be good but still they are bad", is an ageless cry of any pedagogue. In most parishes men and women are receiving Holy Communion who are contracepting, or living in civil partnerships, concubinage, committing acts of sodomy, oppressing the poor, stealing from their employers, ignoring or mistreating their aging parents, addicted to pornography, dealing or using drugs, leaving their neighbour bleeding and beaten by the roadside, or simply denying Christ.

The big difference between our age and that of St Augustine is that most people receive Holy Communion without any thought, bishops and priests celebrate as if it is merely part of the job, some of us even dare to offer it daily or even more often, whether we are in state of Grace or not, unknown of until the modern era! And all really because of the personal Eucharistic piety of Popes since Pius X and since the Council we have lost the sense of conversion, and frankly of calling a spade a spade, a sin a sin.

One of things that makes me anxious about the Synod is that some might be inclined to reduce the gap between practice and teaching, and attempt to square the circle, without addressing the huge elephant in the room which is the Eucharist itself.

Pray for Mary Byrne

I have just come back from the hospital, after Anointing and given the Apostolic Indulgence to Mary one of our parishioners.
Mary is both deaf and dumb, she is dying and I am not quite sure is able to see much, or focus at the moment. She has her carer with her, who is a lovely women but it must be a terribly confusing time.

Pray for her and invoke the Holy Guardian Angels to pray for her and comfort her.

I was told this morning Mary died a few hours after being fortified by the Sacraments of Our holy Mother the Church.

Eternal grant to her O Lord
And let perpetual light shine upon her.
May her Soul and the Souls of all the Faithful Departed rest in peace.
Amen

Investigatons

I have nothing to say about events in my own diocese at the moment, what is interesting in the Church is what John Allen calls a zero tolerance of child abuse in the Church. The problem that Pope Francis seems to be launching investigations into bishops who tend to go against the "spirit of collegiality" using covering up abuse as of minors as an excuse. In the US Bishop Finn is in the firing line but as Nueva Primavera points out there are even better candidates in the US, and he hasn't even touched on Ireland or Belgium or the UK.
It seems as if these inquisitions are being used to strengthen, rather than diminish the various 'magic circles' and careerism in the Episcopate, and unless Pope Francis has a hit list, which I doubt, this is being used by various senior clergy to settle old scores.

Very dangerous and damaging!

Family Synod thoughts

I was on the bus today on the seat in front of me was a Muslim women in a headscarf with three young boys and a baby, she was gently telling one of the boys to stop sulking, whilst feeding the baby and chatting and laughing with the  others. On the sideways on row of seats was another mother dressed in western clothes chatting on her phone and  rather noisily telling off her daughter for making a mess with the chocolate she was eating. In fact she was more interested in fixing up a date for this evening a friend. I know I shouldn't have been listening but it was impossible not to. Her shopping seemed to be mainly bottles. The first mother was relaxed with her children and seemed to enjoy them, the other seemed to find her daughter a bit of trial.

I've been thinking about that phrase in the marriage ceremony about 'welcoming children'. It is interesting that so many of the early Fathers speak of hospitality as an important virtue for Bishops, it seems to be one of the virtues our Holy Father wants in bishops and priests, being welcoming.

I went to Bishop Schneider's Mass at Ramsgate some months ago, I was made very welcome by the Parish Priest, as usual and by the other clergy attending and I had several invitations to lunch, which as I had some parishioners with me and lunch was in restaurants I refused because I some couldn't afford it. My last invitation was from Dominic, the director of music, he invited me back to his parents house, I explained I had five parishioners with me, so I couldn't. His reply, "Oh bring them along, I'm taking the choir anyhow, my mother is used to catering for large numbers!" I think there are thirteen in the family, they are one of those large Catholic families that not only welcome the children God gave them but also their children's friends, and anyone else God sends them. They have certainly had a priest or two staying with them for extended periods. What I love about families like that is the sense of abandonment to God's will, which I am convinced is really behind the Church's teaching, not just on marriage and celibacy but on the spiritual life.

Another of my parishioners met a very nice French girl, who was just different, she took him home to meet her family, her parents and ten younger brothers and sisters, immediately he wanted what they had. He been thinking about becoming a Catholic but it was the encounter with her family that seems to have been main reason for his conversion. They had their wedding a few weeks ago in Paray le Monial, celebrated in the Old Rite by an Archbishop a family friend. In fact both these families are attached to the Old Rite. A real Catholic family is a great evangelical sign when it is truly the 'domestic Church'.

The interesting thing is of course that most Catholics have the national average number of children and practically all of the responses to the pre-Synod questionnaire demonstrate that Catholics are really unaffected by Catholic teaching on marriage and sexuality etc, in fact many, including sadly bishops and priests identify, themselves by their opposition tothis very teaching.

Having more than the average, 1.7 or 1.8 children, is often the preserve of the wealthy today, the cost for many is prohibitive, or at least frightening. The choice for children is counter-cultural, a choice against many of the values of what has become mainstream western culture. It needs a stable marriage for a start, it also has serious financial implications, it involves the mother choosing not to work, accepting different roles in the family.

For most Muslims, unlike Catholics, it is not a difficult choice, and yet 'welcoming children' has serious political and economic implications. Not welcoming children has meant the necessity of immigration, simply because we are not replacing our population or producing the number of people we need for industry. In fact we tend to treat poorer nations as a source of trained, educated workers in the same way as we might treat the as a source of other raw materials. Not welcoming children has been the cause of gender confusion, the commodification of sexuality, a trivialisation and narrowing of our understanding of the family, and a cruder and rougher society.


I get the impression children are part of our society on sufferance, that they are seen not as the natural result of the love of two people but 'chosen' and 'planned'. Now we can speak of children 'being wanted', as if there is a possibility in God's plan of a child being anything other than a gift or a result of God's good providence. If in our society children were a natural result of the committed love of a man and women, children themselves mioght grow up with the understanding that they will naturally themselves become parents sooner rather than later. In reality parenthood itself is not now normative, rather than being something which happens in the late teens or early twenties and being the reason for home and family and labour, it is often now the last significant thing that happens before retirement.
Human loving has changed, it is not seen in terms of protecting and nurturing but in terms of personal satisfaction or even personal happiness. Protecting and nurturing is the mark of unselfish adult love. 'Love' in the Gospel is about moving from self to the other, to God and one's neighbour. The family, is or should be the school of loving and a place of human maturing and flourishing.

My hope for the Synod is that it is really about is welcoming children, as important as other issues are, fundamental to everything is children. The fact they they have not figured greatly so far in pre-Synod discussions indicates how the Church has itself become as contracepting as the average Catholic family or the rest of society.

Malta isn't that bad

 
A few subsequent thoughts on Cardinal Burke going to the Knights of Malta.
They wouldn't let me into the Knights of Malta, not that I would want join, my mum had quarterings by the score being of a foreign disposition, my father unfortunately was quarterless, not a a single one, totally without an arm to his name. In order to join the English Maltese Knights I think the requirement is to be armigerous for four generations, I don't know how they work it in the US.

Mgr Gilby described the Knights as, "doing the least good with the greates amount of fuss", and yet the few knights I know are as individuals rather splendid people, well educated, invariably well connected, often, if not wealthy, at least comfortably off, but more importantly committed to the faith. True they are of trad stripe but they are landowners, on the continent old European aristocracy, in this country they are lawyers, bankers, writers, accademics, army officers, invariably very well connected, what we might call members of the Catholic Establishment.

We talk a great deal about going out to the peripheries to evangelise but in doing that we the risk of turning the Church into a doughnut, all sides but no centre. The spreading of the faith in Brighton is interesting, the first church St John the Baptist, was built in 1835 by the aristocracy led by the Prince Regent's valid but illicit Catholic wife Maria Fitzherbert, it originally had a bar in it seperating the subscribers, who were wealthy from their staff and the masses who knelt behind them, In 1864 our church was built, according to one historian 'to get away from the smelley poor'. 1887 saw the opening of our daughter Church, the Sacred Heart, Hove, it was part of the movement of wealth along the coast as Brighton grew and spread. It illustrates an alternative to the model of  Evangelisation of Evangelium Gaudium.

In the past following Jesus' example of reaching to people like Nicodemus and Simon the Pharisee, the Church has always done good to the poor but tried to evangelise first the upper echelons of society, preferrably the King or the Court, with the expectation they would pass on the faith to their subjects. Jesus after all sends us out ad gentes, to the nations and we were successful at. We used our schools and colleges to form the minds and the very culture, the laws and mores of society. The Jesuits of course were leaders in this.

Since the 1960s everything has changed, now we all do aq great deal of good but with very little effect. Now wouldn't it be exciting if the there was a Cardinal who was young, clear thinking, deeply spiritual, possibly with a bit of American 'get up go', rooted within the Tradition but with a bit of imagination, who had no other duty but to write and teach but mainly to care for and develope an international group of Establishment types. I think that Cardinal Burke could re-invigorate the Knights of Malta and give them a new direction. He could certainly use their influence, their wealth and resources for a very positive effect in the Church. We still need to form the leaders of society. The Knights I know in this country seem to be somewhat disheartened, certainly directionless, possibly more into rubber chicke lunches than serious work for the faith. They lost control of their hospital by a bit of clever sleight of hand, which somehow I doubt would happen if someone like Cardinal Burke was in their corner. They could with the right kind of moral and spiritual leadership and with some enthusiasm become a potent force within the Church and the world, if only someone could give them a vision of what it means to be Catholic today and could cause them to be what they once were the bulwark against the Church's enemies. In the past their Cardinal Patron was given the role as an extra honour, now Burke be could be involved full time, he could bring the back to life.

More could happen with this appointment than some might expect.

Moving Beyond

 
So according to rumours Cardinal Burke is off to become Cardinal-Patron of the Order of Malta. It is hardly surprising considering his opposition to the new orthodoxies. If anyone has presented himself as the 'loyal opposition' it is Burke. Magister points out that he unlike many other Curial Cardinals has maintained his integrity and that is what I have heard from Rome. He is a Nathanael, 'an Israelite without guile'. Others might jockey for position, like renaissance princes, playing the Machiavellian games that are as much part of the Roman scene today as they were five hundred or a thousand years ago.

Ratzinger might well have appointed his enemies to key positions, so long as they could hold an intellectual position together but things are different now, broken corpses are now on display in the city squares. It is not necessary for the Prince to say anything, or even to know his policies, it is actions that are important and being part of his party. It is not the law but the style of interpreting it that matters. The signs of the times are more important than spoken words, the nuance than what is actually said. The straight bat of Burke was hardly going to survive for long in that environment.
Machiavelli, some clerics bedside reading, calls for examples to made, for occasional acts of cruelty, for signs of the Princes ruthless power.

What seems to be being said is that the age of dogma and doctrine is dead, everything is pastoral, focus groups replace creeds, there is more concern with how we are conceived by public opinion than any teaching. Contemporary theologians, Kung or Martini are obvious examples, have like those American religious 'moved beyond' Jesus, the Church, archaic formulas, archaic documents, statements or examples of dead men. What we are now concerned with is the 'lived experience'. In the New Pentecost, the age of the Spirit, that has superseded the age of the articulated Incarnate Word, it is the experience of women and men. The pneumatic, blow where it will Spirit is all that matters. Traddies might understand the 'Spirit of Vatican II' as wild and irrational, 'do what you like' but it is far from that. In is about synchreticisn, dialogue, moderation, compromise, ambiguity, recognition of ignorance, the preference for the via negativa, the rejection of the via positiva. Christ and the Apostles might be unambiguous about judgement, heaven and hell, about Him being the only Way, Truth and Life, about the necessity of Baptism and the Eucharist, about objective realities but in fact 'we have moved beyond' all of that. That is no longer the default position of the Catholic Church.

In that sense Burke and I suppose Ratzinger are the unwelcome voices of the past, increasingly it appears there is no place for them or the followers. Like the old Pope in isolation they await their demise!

Something old, something new

I've had a lovely day, two of my favourite people had a splendid wedding, very good and simple but you could feel their love. These are good people, I met their families for the first time, they were too were good and kind and loving. It is wonderful how goodness flows in families. Keep them in your prayers.

I 'acquired' some new members of the household too, this rather splendid icon of  S George. It is quite big, two foot high, it is obviously a 'Church' icon rather than a domestic one, possibly from the upper register of an iconastasis. It was probably sent to the west in the thirties from some despoiled church to buy grain It would have been stripped of its precious metal oklad and the halo, there are nails and minute traces of gilding, the beige areas would have been gilded but the gilding would have been damaged during this stripping, and it was fashionable in the west during that period to have icons which revealed the gesso ground. The little patch on the side is typical of better icons restored in the soviet workshops, it shows the un-restored state. It was offered for sale as 19/20th century but the craquelure and the discolouration of the un-restored portion as well as the limited palette of earth colours and viridian would indicate an earlier date, perhaps a century or more earlier.

I love the composition: the harmony of the rocks with the figure of S George, the sinuous form of the dragon, which could be inspired by an oriental vase, contrasts with the city; the balancing of shapes, the hand of God blessing from the quadrant of Heaven over S George, the darker portion of the world under the princesses feet and the city walls enclosing even the cathedral dome, all except the upper portion of the cross. What is so beautiful is the ethereal sketchy fluidity of the mounted saint and dragon contrasted with the heaviness of the painting of the city.

I am sure the painter wanted the viewer to compare and contrast the dynamic nature of the spiritual life and the heroic struggle against the dragon and the life of those enclosed in the niches and balconies of the coffin-like city fearing the dragon. It is visual theology: fear versus the freedom of the Sons of God.

(And all for less than a pilgrimage to Lourdes!)