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As astute readers of Catholica Australia
will appreciate, late last week the Bishop of
Parramatta, Kevin Manning, sent a message to the priests in
his diocese asking them to insert the following note in their parish bulletins.
A Message
from Bishop Kevin Manning
The Bishop is aware of a petition being circulated in some parishes
regarding ordaining married men to the priesthood; reinstating expriests
to the priesthood, whether laicised or not; and reinvestigating the ordination
of women. The petition does not have the Bishop's authorisation or support.
When I first heard of this request to the priests I contacted Bishop
Manning's office to confirm that the request had been made. As a result
of my enquiry I understand the Bishop also brought forward publication
of an article he had written for the diocesan newspaper Outlook
and requested that it be published on the
diocesan website immediately. The next edition of Outlook
will not be published until next week.
Here at Catholica Australia
when we first heard about the petition I took an editorial decision to
provide strong support and publicity to this initiative. We are not the
originators of the petition that accolade, responsibility or criticism
belongs rightly to Dr Paul Collins
and Frank Purcell along with a small
group of other people who have been advocates for various measures of
reform in the Catholic Church for some considerable time nevertheless
in some minds Catholica Australia
has become strongly identified with the petition and we make no apologies
for that.
While I disagree with the action taken by Bishop Manning personally
I think it would have probably been more politic for him to have simply
not said anything nevertheless I also believe there are some things
that ought be said in the bishop's defence. That will be the principal
purpose of this editorial as well as one of using the bishop's
intervention to draw further attention to the petition itself and what
it hopes to achieve. I have written privately to Bishop Manning expressing
my views and they will be no surprise to the readers of Catholica
because, in essence, I have only summarised in about two A4 pages the
arguments I have presented publicly on Catholica
over the last few months with a view to trying persuade him "to a
slightly different perspective" on the matters he has raised both
in his parish bulletin note and in the article from his diocesan newspaper,
Outlook.
I think it is significant that the Bishop has waited so long to make
his views known. I am sure he appreciates that already the petition has
been an overwhelming success in terms of the original objectives of its
organisers. In his usual Wednesday commentary tomorrow, our lawyer commentator,
Peregrinus, will be providing a quite
detailed analysis of the various ways in which this petition might be
evaluated. Why was it necessary for the Bishop to intervene at this late
stage? Were there some riots going on in certain parishes because of the
stir caused by parish priests who were assisting with the publicising
of the petition or encouraging people to sign it? Had some of the vocal
opponents of any discussion in the Church been stirring the Bishop up
and he felt he needed to placate them? What was the agenda here?
Not as great a crisis in Parramatta
In Bishop Manning's defence I would just like to make a couple of editorial
comments. Firstly, and as he explained
in his
lengthy interview with myself which we published on 14 August
just gone, Bishop Manning is in the
fortunate position of not having as great a crisis in participation in
his diocese as is being faced in most of the rest of this nation. Whereas
most bishops around Australia are faced with embarrassing participation
rates of 15% and very often much less than that, in Parramatta Diocese,
Bishop Manning has participation rates of the baptised as high as 25 or
30%. Through the good fortune of recent immigration patterns and demographics,
Parramatta Diocese has a very high multi-cultural complexion and particularly
high in the sectors of the immigrant population who continue to have considerable
confidence in the Church and who still practise. Their outlook is not
necessarily shared by the wider and more traditional Irish and English
families in the population who, some decades ago now, formed the backbone
of the Church in this country. As the bishop himself admits, he's not
having much success in the more educated sectors of his constituency but
I think it is entirely understandable, even if it might be debatable,
that he might need to deal with a certain level of panic in sectors of
his diocesan congregation who get a bit nervous when they see ideas being
talked about like the substantive issues that this petition is asking
the Bishops of Australia to discuss.
Secondly, both on the record during
my extended interview with him and more so when the interview finished
and we'd shut off the recorder Bishop Manning made very clear to
myself that he holds no brief for those other "dissident sectors"
that he sees in the Church from the right wing.
Providing moral support to our bishops
In the balance I think the more likely explanation for the Bishop's intervention
is because of the factors I have mentioned in the first point I made above.
While I didn't particularly enjoy the implication that Catholica,
or the organisers of this petition, are "dissident", I am quite
happy to live with that in that our objective here at Catholica
is an endeavour to try and provide an outreach to the educated mainstream
of the population who view themselves today as having been disenfranchised
from their church and spiritual home. Necessarily to achieve our objective
we have to make criticisms of those in positions of authority, and their
policies, which over a long period of time have both failed to stem the
exodus and have patently failed to meet the real spiritual needs of the
broad masses of God's faithful. As I have clearly explained to Bishop
Manning though, at heart, the principal reason we have supported the petition
here at Catholica is not because
we believe the Australian Bishops have any significant power to make changes
to the issues that they are being asked to consider that power
ultimately rests in Rome we believe this
petition does serve the other important objective of endeavouring to provide
moral support to the Australian Bishops particularly the moderate
and pastoral bishops as they struggle with the crisis in meeting the sacramental
and spiritual needs of their people. There
is ample evidence that the majority of the Australian bishops do in fact
understand the needs of their people and have their hands tied behind
their backs in trying to meet those needs.
This book will be no threat to the majority of the Australian
bishops but an excellent Christmas present
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Cover
of "Cardinal Mahony a novel"
Available from today on amazon.com
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Tomorrow, we will also be providing some publicity for a new book by
the provocative American Catholic writer and journalist, Robert
Blair Kaiser. It's entitled, "Cardinal
Mahony a novel". I would urge our bishops to
get in quick and order a copy online to perhaps present as Christmas presents
to their colleagues. The initial print run for this book is 10,000 so
its likely to have a little more penetration than the discomfort that
Bishop Robinson's book might have already brought. There is "something
in the air" at the moment and, gentlemen, the comfortable club that
the clerical state has been for so long for the privileged few is about
to have a bottle brush thrust up its nether regions and out through its
gob. If you read Kaiser's book you might gain some insight into what that
"bottle brush" is going to feel like for those who are on the
receiving end of it. It ain't a soft nylon bristled brush either.
I submit to you that those who have set the agenda for the institution
for so long have now reached the point where they will begin to experience
increased resistance if the policies and thinking of the last 200 years
are allowed to prevail any further. As we cut further and further into
the 15% who are still practising, these people are no longer going to
passively leave without writing you bishops any protest notes explaining
why they are leaving. They are increasingly demanding
spiritual guides and mentors who do speak their language. They want men,
and women, who understand their spiritual and moral needs. They are not
interested any longer in playing this game of worshipping bishops, or
priests, or popes or even Jesus or his mother Mary as though they were
some pop or sporting stars like Kylie Minogue, Russell Crowe, Mel Gibson,
Shane Warne, Ben Cousins or Andrew Johns. The
vast majority of the people are looking for a new "presence"
of Jesus that is far more "real" than this sham game
that the right wing, traditionalist and emotionally insecure sectors of
the Church have been playing for decades in trying to elevate the theological
"real presence" into some sense of scientific "real presence"
and litmus test of orthodoxy. They want "real
priests" and "real bishops" who have put away these games
of pleasing mummy and social conformism. Those games do not lead
to salvation or resurrection. They do not lead to "thy kingdom come".
They do not lead to the personal bliss, love and "peace that surpasses
all human understanding" that is held out to them in the spiritual
and theological concept of heaven as "heaven" has been promoted
at the populist level for so long. You, as our spiritual and ecclesial
leaders owe your people far more than you have been serving up to them.
You might look to the example of Cardinal Mahony as he is semi-fictitiously
portrayed in this new racy, but deeply insightful, novel by Robert Blair
Kaiser to gain some insight into what I have written in this editorial.
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Brian
Coyne is the editor and publisher of Catholica Australia.
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We welcome your thoughts in response to this editorial in our forum.
©2007
Catholica Australia
(Originally published as Email Commentary
386)
[Editorial Archive]
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