Clerical abuse will give us a smaller, purer Church

Listening to the Today programme on Radio Four I heard the voxpop report on the state of the Church from the point of view of the Catholic man in the pew in Ireland. It was a reasonable production although I would not agree with many of the sentiments expressed by the populi.

An air of gloomy despair seems to have entered Catholic life; so many scandals, homosexual priests, paedophila, intrigue at the highest level, disobedience. So what?

Malicious gossip or the axe?

Give me malicious gossip all the time!

This is what we were born to and, if we have periods of calm and serenity we should count ourselves fortunate, providentially so.

If those Irish Catholics and others feel like leaving the barque just because the seas are rough they have forgotten an important lesson; Christ is still in command.

We would, perhaps do well to dwell on what our priests are having to suffer now as a result of iniquity on the part of others. Every step they take in public must be a step along the Via Dolorosa, the sideways glance, the children hurriedly taken hold of by their parents, the muttered insult. And at night, they return to a lonely presbytery where the pressures of the day accumulate.

So those who feel that the Pope is no longer infallible or that the Faith has flaws in its doctrine might like to consider leaving altogether - that is not a suggestion, just an observation. We will become a smaller Church but a purer one where all believe all. Not one where part believe parts.

We became a smaller, purer Church in the 16th and 17th centuries, partly, again, as a result of clerical abuse of a different kind. St Hugh Green, West Country priest, elected to remain true to his Church and faithful to its teachings when he mounted the scaffold on 19th August 1642 in the full knowledge that he would soon become overly acquainted with a hempen rope followed by a searching knife before being hacked into four pieces. He endured these sufferings after experiencing the decline of his church and all the snide statements and comments and persecutions that went with it. He did not leave.

Over the next few days I shall attempt to give a sketch of this great martyr's life and, in particular, the final few days he endured before he received his heavenly crown - his just reward.

St Hugh Green Part1

A Londoner by birth he spent some years studying at Cambridge before converting to the faith and, in 1610, began his journey to Douai being ordained on 14th June 1612.

St Hugh's chair, on display at the
church of Our Lady Queen of Martyrs

Chideock, Dorset

He returned to take up his cross in England and became chaplain at Dorset's Chideock Castle and, more covertly, at a nearby barn (now the church of Our Lady Queen of Martyrs). He was arrested there following  King Charles I proclamation banishing all priests.

This is his final address from the scaffold, based upon the four last things....

"There be four principal things which all men ought to remember: death, judgement, Heaven and Hell. Death is a horror to nature, but that which followeth is much more terrible, viz. judgement, if we die not as we ought; and as we dispose ourselves to good or evil in this life, so shall the measurement of our punishment or glory succeed.

I am here condemned to die for my religion and for being a priest: we know there must be priests, for God, foretelling of the Church by prophets, saith 'Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedech' (Ps. cix)

'And from the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof, there shall be a clean sacrifice offered in My Name. (Mal. i).

Now four things are to be considered: a God, a sacrifice, a priest, a man: such am I, and therefore I must die. Wherefore do we receive holy unction and are made priests but to offer sacrifice to God?

But I am condemned for being ordained by the See of Rome.

St Paul saith, 'The Romans have the Catholic faith' and gives God thanks that their faith and his were one, of which Catholic faith I am"