Do you speak Bishopese?

No? Well here is a brief selection of phrases that will help you understand the meaning of what many of our Bishops say.....

"I have established Mass in the Extraordinary Form in my Diocese in accord with Summorum Pontificum"

Meaning:
"I have one parish 68 miles from the nearest city that celebrates the EF Mass once a month (except when there is an 'r' in it)  on a Wednesday at 3.30pm"

"There is little demand for Mass in the Extraordinary Form in my Diocese"

Meaning:
 "I ignore all representations made to me"

"The teachings of the Church with regard to homosexuality are quite clear"

Meaning:
 "I am relaxed about homosexuals having the Mass framed around their spiritual needs"

"None of my priests have any desire to say the Latin Mass"

Meaning:
"Any troublemakers are dealt with by being given particularly hard and arduous roles and by being placed in far flung parishes"

"There are no traditional applicants for the priesthood"

Meaning:
"I grill them at interview stage and get rid of any with traditional leanings"

"In my Diocese we have independent Catholic Adoption organisations"

Meaning:
"I've washed my hands of the issue and now Catholic children may be fostered by homosexuals"

"I abide by the guidance of the Holy Father and the teachings of the church"

Meaning:
"The Pope does not know what goes on in my Diocese, I am the best judge of interpreting church teachings and bringing them up to date"

"I like to play golf on Thursdays"

Meaning:

"I like to play golf on Thursdays"

Holy Father issues an order and...4 years on.....yawn...zzzzz!

"...blogging... should be made a serious criminal offence...."


Remember 29th December 2007?  No? Well you should because the Holy Father sent forth a command around the globe to the effect that all Bishops should look to their exorcist missiles and prime them ready for use - and, if they only had one or two Diocesan Exorcists, they should gear up and get a team together - Satanism is on the march as we well know.

I do not believe that this message from Pope Benedict, Christ's representative on earth and recipient of the wisdom of the Holy Spirit; Head of the Catholic Church and Vicar of Rome, ever reached England and Wales.

That, at least, would be a charitable explanation of why the CBEW snooze while the devil charges around destroying souls.

I have worked for one or two big organisations in the past and there was always one rule that was ever observed;
"when the CEO says jump...then do it pdq and do it high".
Without that obedience to a single, supreme (in an earthly sense) source all becomes anarchy, chaos and confusion allowing the enemy to thrive and flourish at will.

But the Bishops appear to put two episcopal digits in the air to all that comes from Rome.
Could it be that the old enemy (not England) has already penetrated the walls of Dunblessin House? Is 'the smoke of satan' whisping through the carpeted halls of Archbishops' residences throughout the land?

Just to refresh your memory this is how the press reported the issue back in 2007:-

The Pope has ordered his bishops to set up exorcism squads to tackle the rise of Satanism.

Vatican chiefs are concerned at what they see as an increased interest in the occult.
They have introduced courses for priests to combat what they call the most extreme form of "Godlessness."
Each bishop is to be told to have in his diocese a number of priests trained to fight demonic possession.
The initiative was revealed by 82-year-old Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican "exorcistinchief," to the online Catholic news service Petrus.
"Thanks be to God, we have a Pope who has decided to fight the Devil head-on," he said.
"Too many bishops are not taking this seriously and are not delegating their priests in the fight against the Devil. You have to hunt high and low for a properly trained exorcist.
"Thankfully, Benedict XVI believes in the existence and danger of evil - going back to the time he was in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith." The CDF is the oldest Vatican department and was headed by Benedict from 1982, when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, until he became Pope in 2005.

Daily Mail

Intent on discovering whether there was any truth in my suspicion that no extra exorcists have been appointed in England and Wales (or that a Diocese even had an exorcist in the first place) I emailed 21 (only 21, not every Media contact has an email address - unbelievable) Diocesan Media Communications Officers, telling them that I intended to publish the results.

To date only 2 have responded. And one of those was a  "no show" inasmuch that the priest concerned, Fr Derek Turnham of Stokesley, North Yorkshire, refused to relay the information to me.

He does not appear to like Catholic bloggers. OK. That's his prerogative, no problem there. But in his capacity as a media information type person doesn't he have a duty to pass on information? Well?

Here is what Fr T has to say about my request:-

Dear Richard

Thank you very much for kindly responding with the information about your research.

I am afraid that for personal ethical reasons I am not prepared to co-operate – I believe that blogging as currently manifested should be made a serious criminal office because of the significantly negative comments that are so often made about people who are trying to do their best are so destructive to the good of society.

This statement speaks for itself, I will make no comments on the sentiments Father Turner expresses as I am sure that every Catholic blogger will have their own views on this matter.

If a journo from The Sun newspaper (I use the word loosely) contacted him and asked him for the same information...would he refuse?

Has he not heard of the Holy Father's words of encouragement on the new media technologies and those who dabble in them?

Fr Turner was very free in granting an interview to The T****t magazine (I use the word loosely) allowing them a fly on the wall insight into his domestic life, so why so coy about the number of exorcists in the Diocese?
Unless, of course, there are none and the Pope's order has not been obeyed.

And now, a big thank you to Fr John Harvey of Brentwood Diocese. He responded by return giving complete information as requested. He, also, may not approve of my blog or of Catholic bloggers, I do not know. But I do know that he was professional and confident enough to reply, and that's just plain Christian courtesy and sound business practice.

So, all that time has elapsed since Pope Benedict's request to his Bishops and little or nothing appears to have been done in response to that request, certainly in England and Wales.

Zilch....nothing, no reply.

That fact, in itself begs the question.......when you make a demand surely you follow through to see if your orders have been obeyed?

So why has Rome been silent for the best part of four years?
Is someone keeping the HF in the dark?

Maybe I need to make a phone call to find out more.....where's that number?
.....ah, yes, here it is....666......ooops!

Postscript: H/T to Berenike for pointing out that the Vatican denied (at the time) issuing such a request to the Bishops. There appears to be two views here but, even accepting that the Vatican is right and Fr Amorth wrong, we should still have exorcists in every Diocese - teams of them!

Revealed! The Bishop's training video

Have you ever wondered how our Bishops fine tune their minds so that they can cope with all the complex problems that face them - how they ensure that they are at the cutting edge of decision taking and innovation.

At last I am able to reveal their training video, it's a real eye opener!

Can you think of any priests, Bishops or Archbishops who do not condemn homosexuality?



Aaahh...mmmm......let me think now....errr. there's Father A, B and P and Bishop R, S, G, well all of 'em really and then there's Archbishop.......no - don't go there!

Cardinal Robert Sarah

 

Well Cardinal Robert Sarah has stated in no uncertain terms that they are all in grave danger of finding themselves on the wrong side of Divine judgement. Here is what he said:

"If we have fear of proclaiming the truth of the Gospel, if we are ashamed of denouncing the grave deviations in the area of morality, if we accommodate ourselves to this world of moral laxity and religious and ethical relativism, if we are afraid to energetically denounce the abominable laws regarding the new global ethos, regarding marriage, the family in all of its forms, abortion, laws in total opposition to the laws of nature and of God, and that the western nations and cultures are promoting and imposing thanks to the mass media and their economic power, then the prophetic words of Ezechiel will fall on us as a grave divine reproach.”

Whew! Hot on the heels of Fr Vincent Twomey we have a senior churchman telling the world what the traditionalists have always held to...the true teachings of Christ, not the compromised teachings of Christ or the teachings of Christ according to the homosexual lobby or the anti life groups; the actual teachings of Christ as handed down to us by Christ Himself.

This Cardinal is not afraid to speak the uncomfortable (to many) truth. In May he addressed a gathering of aid organisations and instructed them that he had noted :

“a serious moral regression and gradual ‘silent apostasy’” in the western world. He also noted that foreign aid for Catholics “is not merely philanthropic and humanitarian assistance aimed at relieving a certain kind of distress, but also and above all it entails giving back to human persons all their dignity as children of God, and promoting an anthropology that also encompasses the religious dimension of human persons, namely their encounter with God.”

What is more, in his June address he said that:

"... in modern society “we no longer know what is evil and what is good. There are a multitude of points of view.  Today, we call white what we once called black, and vice versa.  What is serious, and make no mistake about it, is the transformation of error into a rule of life. 

“In this context, as priests, pastors and guides of the People of God, you should be continuously focused on being always loyal to the doctrine of Christ.  It is necessary for you to constantly strive to acquire the sensitivity of conscience, the faithful respect for dogma and morality, which constitute the deposit of faith and the common patrimony of the Church of Christ.”

Sometimes one feels an enormous sense of relief at hearing such sound teaching coming from a Cardinal; it comes at a time when so much tripe and nonsense has been flung around the ether by those who are supposed to be our shepherds that we almost begin to doubt our own sanity, and begin to think that we have just gone barking mad and, somewhere along the line, missed the big point.

That is not the case. The Church, always when faced with grim opposition, even from within, comes to the surface with an explosion of sound common sense thanks to a liberal helping of the wisdom of the Holy Spirit. Deo Gratias!

Pray for Cardinal Sarah; pray for the Faith and pray (yes pray very hard) for our Bishops.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE:

Cardinal Sarah hails from Guinea and on 20 November 2010, Pope Benedict XVI created and proclaimed him Cardinal-Deacon of San Giovanni Bosco  in via Tuscalona. He will have voting rights until his 80th birthday. On 29 December 2010, Cardinal Sarah was appointed a member of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples,  Pontifical Council for the Laity and Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

Christopher Dawson on the early Bishops

Described as "the greatest English speaking Catholic historian of the twentieth century" Dawson was greatly influenced in his writings by J.R.R. Tolkien.

One of our finest 20th Century
historians - Christopher Dawson

Converting to the Catholic Church in 1914 he wrote many books including; Medieval Religion and other Essays, The Age of Gods, Christianity and the New Age and many more besides.

Below is an extract from his essay on the early Bishops and he paints a picture that, I guess, many priests and laity would wish to see in their Diocese today.
A dynamic Bishop, unafraid to take on the power of the State, defender of the poor; a spiritual leader as well as a secular one.
Where did we go wrong?
The number of Bishops who today would match up to the profile described by Christopher Dawson is pitifully few; in England and Wales they are as rare as hen's teeth, America has a sprinkling of them, one in Kazakhstan and thankfully, a few are movers and shakers in Rome. I wish they would move and shake a bit more!

With Athanasius as a Christian name
you would expect this man to be a
mover and shaker -
Bishop Schneider of Kazakhstan

This is an extract from Dawson's writings on the early Bishops...........

"The Christian Bishop was, in fact, the dominant figure in the life of the time. His position was something entirely new, for which no precedent can be found in the old religion of the city-state or in the priesthoods of the oriental mystery religions.
Not only did he possess enormous prestige as the head of the Catholic Church, but he was the leader of the people in social matters also. 
He occupied the position of a popular tribune, whose duty it was to defend the poor and the oppressed and to see that the strong did not abuse their power.
He alone stood between the people and the oppression of the bureaucracy.

He was not afraid to withstand an unjust law or to excommunicate an oppressive governor, and the life and correspondence of St Ambrose or St Basil or Synesius or St Augustine himself shows how frequently a Bishop was called upon to intervene between the government and the people, and how fearlessly he performed his duty.

On one occasion it is recorded that the praetorian prefect was so offended by St Basil's freedom of speech that he declared that he had never in his life been spoken to in such a manner.
"No doubt", replied St Basil wittily, "you have never met a Bishop".....

The Church was also taking the place of the State as the organiser of charity and of the support of the poor. Every church had its matriculum or list of persons in receipt of regular relief, and enormous sums were spent in every kind of charitable work. All over the Empire, hospitals, orphanages and hostels for travellers were being built and endowed: so that the basilica was often the centre of a whole quarter which lived by and for the Church.

Thus the Church stands out in this dark age as the one hope of humanity both spiritually and materially. It saved the individual from being entirely crushed under the pressure of the servile State, and it opened to him a new world of social and spiritual activity in which the free personality had room to develop itself.
Hence, when the final collapse of the imperial government in the West took place, the Bishop remained the natural leader of the Roman population.
He was the representative of the old secular culture as well as of the new spiritual society, and it was through him, above all, that the continuity of Western civilisation was preserved"

Every word of Dawson's appraisal is a gem to be treasured; every sentiment expressed gives cause to regret that we have so few leaders today about whom it could be said that they played a part in ensuring the continuity of Western civilisation or that they would fearlessly stand up to the State.

Christopher Dawson was born in 1889 and, after his conversion he wrote extensively on the Medieval Church and the development of civilisation from those roots (a somewhat unpopular view in Protestant circles that would have one believe that all Catholics sprang out of a heitage of superstition and blind ignorance).
From 1958-1962 he was Chauncey Stillman Chair of Roman Catholic Studies at Harvard University.
He died in 1970 - RIP

Catholics of England and Wales rise up and kneel down!

That is an exhortation, not a contradiction in terms, and one that calls for careful consideration. I am saying that now is the time for English and Welsh Catholics (and others who may wish to join in) to disobey the Bishops - gulp! Yes, disobey them and kneel to receive Our Lord in Holy Communion.
Stop shilly shallying and just do it! Kneel. It is your right and the right thing to do.
Who will you offend by doing so? Your parish priest? Fellow parishioners? Tough!
Who will you offend by not doing so? - Almighty God.

It doesn't have to be a big thing, just go down on one knee (if you are able) and if you take some flak after Mass remember that Christ took some flak for us also and it was much worse than a nag from one's fellow man.

The Bishops of England and Wales are quite wrong to state that reception of Communion standing should be the norm - so do not stand for it, kneel!

The following piece was written by he who must be obeyed, the Holy Father (when he was Cardinal Ratzinger)

"It may well be that kneeling is alien to modern culture–insofar as it is a culture, for this culture has turned away from the faith and no longer knows the One before whom kneeling is the right, indeed the intrinsically necessary gesture. The man who learns to believe learns also to kneel, and a faith or a liturgy no longer familiar with kneeling would be sick at the core. Where it has been lost, kneeling must be rediscovered, so that, in our prayer, we remain in fellowship with the apostles and martyrs, in fellowship with the whole cosmos, indeed in union with Jesus Christ Himself. "

H/T to Roma Locuta Est and The Muniment Room

A great priest who disobeyed his Bishop!

Not just once but several times according to his autobiography. He was, arguably, the last of the traditional Cardinals of England & Wales; he was frequently fighting the cause of Catholic conservatism on a wide range of television programmes, he criticised the USA for being too fixated with communism and not attentive enough to spiritual affairs and he also made the famous riposte to his aide, the then Monsignor Bruce Kent who had, upon driving past a socialist poster, said to the Cardinal: "Better red than dead". "Oh no", came the reply from the Cardinal: "Better dead than red."

He recognised the pitfalls that were opening up after the Second Vatican Council and again made the famous comment (about the Novus Ordo after witnessing the new Mass in Rome): 

"At home it is not only women and children but also fathers of families and young men who come regularly to mass. If we were to offer them the kind of ceremony we saw yesterday in the Sistine Chapel we would soon be left with a congregation mostly of women and children."

So who is this man who, as a priest disobeyed his Bishop and what were the circumstances under which he did so?

It is, of course, none other than Cardinal John Carmel Heenan, Archbishop of Westminster.

I find it intriguing that, as a parish priest, he actually went against the will of his Bishop especially as so many priests today give the reason for not celebrating the EF Mass as being due to episcopal obedience: "The Bishop would never approve".
Never mind that Rome has spoken on the subject!

Here are the circumstances in which Fr Heenan found himself. The Second World War had just come to an end and his London East End parish of Barking had felt the full force of the blitz. Everywhere one looked there was ruin and desolation, whole terraces of houses now reduced to a pile of rubble, hospitals, community centres, churches and schools lay in ruins. And Fr Heenan's Catholic School was among the casualties. He set out with typical vigour, to rebuild the school and build up his scattered flock but his Bishop, being a man of bureacratic leanings, was not in favour of the parish priest's plans.
Here is an extract from the Cardinal's autobiography, covering this episode in his life:-

"...Before the Far Eastern end of the war was over the rebuilding of the bombed school had begun. It was a heartening sight. I was not worried about paying for the building because war damage claims would eventually cover most of the cost. I merely had to borrow a few thousand pounds to keep the contractors happy until 'the war damage' (the colloquialism for the government department concerned) paid the bill. I wrote happily to the bishop for leave to borrow five thousand pounds. He refused on the grounds that I should not have begun to rebuild the school without having submitted the plans to him. He would not authorise me to borrow any money. The building must be stopped forthwith. I wrote in great alarm to the bishop to explain that the building was only a replacement of the damaged section of the school. Strictly speaking, there were no new plans to submit. The bishop was not moved.

It is hard to exaggerate my dilemma. If I obeyed the bishop it might prove impossible to bring back the contractors when the bishop had seen the light. There was, in addition, the devastating effect on public relations with East Ham Borough - as well as the blow to the morale of the teachers, parents, children and the neighbours who, after all the bombing were delightedly watching a building going up rather than down. I did not know what to do. I had never defied the bishop despite all trials but this time I could see no alternative.
Reluctantly I took the bishop's letter forbidding me to borrow the money to the Apostolic Delegate whom I had known both at Ushaw and in Rome. I asked him quite simply to tell me what I must do. I was aware of the principle that it is always safe to obey but I did not see how in this case the principle could apply.
I had come to the Apostolic Delegate because I was genuinely in doubt about my duty. To my relief - and somewhat to my surprise since Mgr Godfrey was an ultra-cautious man - the Delegate's reply was unhesitating. He added that for some time he had been receiving reports of the bishop's increasing loss of contact with affairs.
It was true that I could now go ahead without scruple......"

I admire people who kick against the traces and take a risk for the common good. We need more politicians, teachers and doctors who are prepared to chance their arm in undertaking initiatives aimed at improving the lot of man......and we certainly need more priests and bishops who will do so!

The extract is from 'Not the Whole Truth'