Oxymoron

There's good stuff in today's Guardian.

Pick yourself up off the floor, stop laughing, and read this. It's an interesting article by Adrian Pabst in defence of Pope Benedict. 'This Pope is Romantic, not reactionary'.

Is this the first sign of the return of some balance in this awful business?

A Happy Easter to All Catholics, from the BBC

No, of course not: don't be silly!

A senior ecclesiastic that I spoke to this morning said that he had been repeatedly pressed by journalists to tell them how empty churches would be this weekend—very empty or extremely empty?

Of course, here, as in other parishes, we have had record congregations—record highs, that is, not lows. Our churches here in the Adur Valley have, thank God, been over-full for every one of the five Easter Masses so far. There will be one more this evening.

But no doubt the media will report that tomorrow that Catholics are abandoning the Church in droves……

And did you listen to the 1pm news today on Radio 4? If so, you will have heard an interview with a representative from We Are Church (that natural authoritative recourse for comment on all Catholic affairs) alleging that the Holy Father, as Archbishop of Munich routinely moved pædophile priests around, like all his colleagues; the ghastly man just alluded to it as if it were common knowledge, and indeed, his assertion went unchallenged. I was just about to boil, when they presented a far better interview with Damian Thompson.

Oh, when is this going to end? When they've gone the rounds of every country in the world, I suppose, or else got bored. Fortunately, the latter is likely to be the former, if you see what I mean.

Alleluia!

A very happy Easter to you all!

Yes, I know I posted this pic last year, I just couldn't resist it again.

The meaning of words

We have heard a lot about twisting words in the media recently, and several Catholic prelates have suffered it. Now it is the turn of the Archbishop of Canterbury. I am sorry. We may be in an awful pickle at the moment, but I have no desire to pull anyone else into the pot.

I read this morning in several places that the said prelate refused his blessing to those Anglicans who wish to become Catholics.

In fact, what he said was:

They believe they ought to be in communion with the Bishop of Rome. I can only say fine, God bless them. I don't at the moment.

i.e. he doesn't believe he ought to be in communion with the Bishop of Rome at the moment, not that he refuses his blessing to those who do.

He might indeed have been more careful in choosing his words about the Church in Ireland, but I don't really think his words were worse than, say, Bishop Conry's statement about being holed beneath the waterline. Both are expressions of the gravity of the situation, about which nobody is in doubt.

These things are simply more attempts of bored journalists trying to whip up a story where there ought to be none.

You can read more of the Archbishop of Canterbury's words here on the Times on line site. And you might care to note that the Archbishop of Dublin is called 'Mr Martin'. I hope that was a mistake and not a deliberate insult.

(This page has now been changed, I see)

As for Cantalamessa…… Well, if not actually wrong, then he was gravely imprudent, to say the least. There are people out there who are understandably sensitive about any comparisons with the holocaust. This is not a time to be making that comparison, if ever there were a good time!