A Sheep in Sheep’s clothing: Archbishop Vincent Nichols

Spot the error.

Some of you might remember a Michael Voris video posted some weeks ago about two bishops rebuking one of their own priests, one for being a heretic and the other for being a … Catholic.

The same has happened now in England, where none less than the Homo Mass Supremo, Archbishop Vincent Nichols, has distanced himself from declarations made from Mr. Edmund Adamus, one of his own aides.

Let us see the content of Mr. Adamus’ declarations:

1) “Gay rights”  and the commercialisation of sex have turned Britain into a “selfish, hedonistic wasteland” and “the geopolitical epicentre of the culture of death”

Fair enough, says I. As far as the hedonism is concerned, this is actually the same stuff people like Nichols go around saying all the time, though they’d never dare to say it in a way that offends perverts. What is different here is that whilst Archbishop Nichols and his ilk always formulate their criticisms in a way that makes clear that they do not want to pick a fight with anyone and are perfectly happy with not being heard, Adamus actually cares for Catholic values and for human life and therefore expresses himself with great charity. It is not surprising that this charity be not liked by Nichols. Archbishop Nichols does niceness a lot, but charity is not one of his strenghts.

2) There is an “aggressive anti-Catholic bias towards the church and the pontiff”

In general, this is as clear as the sun and everyone with a bit of understanding can easily realise that the English Bishops not only don’t do anything to counter the bias, but are rather happy to leave the Pontiff alone when the rabid feminists and homo groups at the BBC and elsewhere fire from all cannons. It is rather fair to say that large sectors of the Catholic hierarchy look with pleasure at criticisms to the Pope, seen as an ally of the traditionalists/conservatives.

As to the matter itself, I’d say the bias in the country is primarily anti-Christian rather than specifically anti-Catholic. The attacks against the Catholic Church are particularly virulent because the Catholic Church still has a much better grip on his faithful than the Anglicans & Co. and because the forces of secularism clearly recognise in Her the biggest enemy. Therefore whatever anti-Catholicism there is, is in my eyes rather a reflection of Catholics being Christians than – as in the past – of their being Catholic. The Anglicans themselves are able to largely escape criticism because they largely shun Christian values.

3) He urges Catholics to “exhibit counter-cultural signals against the selfish, hedonistic wasteland”

Please help me because I am lost here. To spread such a message should be the job of the bishops from the Angelus in the morning to the Compline in the evening and in every moment in between. This is the reason Mr. Nichols’ exalted (and, let us not forget, rather privileged) job exists in the first place. This is what the English clergy should be shouting from the pulpits Sunday in and Sunday out. Unless I am missing something and the Church’s task is not to upset the world. Or where does the Archbishop thinks abortions, broken families and neglected children come from?

Still, we are informed from a spokesman of the Archbishop that Adamus’ comments “do not reflect his opinion”. From a sponsor of homo masses, one is not surprised at all.

If we want to fight against the culture of death and of sexual perversion, a good start would be to have bishops who are truly Catholic and truly charitable instead of being cowardly “diplomatic” and relentlessly “nice” as the present Archbishop of Westminster.

Mundabor

The Papal Visit, the New Mass and the Scones.

No time to post the text of the new Mass, apparently.....

William Oddie of the Catholic Herald has another interesting contribution about the fact that whilst the US Bishops already have their new text of the NO online, the E&W bishops haven’t posted anything yet.

One could obviously argue that now that the Holy Father is coming everyone is busy preparing sandwiches and brewing tea, so that there is no time to say “we are improving the Mass and here we explain to you how and why”; not even the time to simply post the text and say “this is the new text starting from Advent 2011; enjoy the reading and we’ll explain the modifications in the coming months”.

Why is that, is the rather rhetorical question of the author. The answer is obviously that it is very difficult to make a halfway serious effort to explain the changes introduced by the new version without exposing all the deficiencies of the old one, in which our old Sixty-Eighters had such an emotional (and political) investment. In the US, where by all the problems there are still bishops ready to fight the good fight, the Bishops’ conference naturally reflects this different, mixed attitude but in the UK, where the Magic Circle still dominates the appointments and feels rather strong, this does not happen.

I do not know whether this is supposed to be an additional slap in the face of the Holy Father and I want to assume that before his visit at least the bare text will be available online as an obvious tribute to the man who was the driving force behind it. Still, by the actual crop of bishops one can never know. They’ll blame the scones, I suppose.

Mundabor

The Theologian and Fr Corapi’s Grandmother.

Short, interesting and as always very entertaining video from Father Corapi about the opportunity of trying to convert other Christians to Catholicism.

Besides the obvious wisdom of father Corapi’s words, there is an element I’d like to stress. The person implicitly accusing Fr Corapi of “wanting everybody to be Catholic” (and being “deadly serious” as he says that) was not a Presbyterian pastor, or a Protestant layman. This person, completely missing the grace imparted through the Eucharist and the Catholic sacramental life and totally oblivious of the role and function of the Church, was a Catholic priest.

The conversation clearly happened a couple of decades ago and it is reassuring to see that at the “wanting everyone to be a Catholic” moment the public understands the absurdity of the other priest’s position and happily laugh.

That Fr Corapi felt the necessity to instruct the other priest about the fact that “God doesn’t do useless things” (and we are talking here of Sacraments like the Eucharist and the Confession, not about a corkscrew or a safety-pin) really says it all about what was happening among the clergy of the Only Church.

I am rather confident that if would be, if not impossible, certainly much less probable to find a priest failing his vocation and his Catholicism in such a spectacular way today than it would have been some twenty years ago, particularly among younger priests. Still, it goes to show that the “education” and “intelligence” Father Corapi praises in his old interlocutor are not worth much if the faith is not there, or the intelligence has been used to pervert the teaching of the Church.

At the top of this page you will find a link called “The Quotable Catholic”, a collection of short and mostly easy to memorise phrases meant to be a handy Catholic armoury for yourself and your little, ahem, online confrontations. I re-read them regularly in order to let the wisdom of those great Catholics be slowly absorbed. Father Corapi (easily the most represented in this little collection) is there with a little gem I always found wonderful:

My grandmother, who had only an eighth grade education, knew more than many theologians because she knew the Truth.

One listens to the video and understands how right the man is.

Mundabor