No Smoke Without Fire...
According to Damian Thompson (Holy Smoke) the Bishop of Lancaster, the Rt Rev Patrick O'Donoghue, will mark his retirement this month with a review of the state of the Catholic Church that strongly criticises the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales for its "divergent views" and failure to uphold Church teaching on same-sex couples.
The bishop, who recently deplored the state of Catholic education in a teaching document, says his colleagues seemed "surprised" that he had spoken out in defence of traditional values.
He attacks the way the Bishops' Conference bureaucracy divides major issues into "areas of responsibility" for particular bishops, leaving other bishops "reluctant ... to speak out on these issues, as if somehow they had handed over their competence in these areas to the responsible bishops and his particular committee".
And he adds: "I must register, too, my disappointment that our Bishops' Conference recently could not agree a collegial response to the Government's legislation on same-sex adoption."
The Conference's statements, says Bishop O'Donoghue, tend to be "flat and safe at a time when we need passionate and courageous public statements that dare to speak the full truth in love".
I should emphasise that the bishop's stinging criticism forms only a small part of a long and thought-provoking 92-page report, A Fit for Mission Church: Being Catholic Today, which will be published on August 27. It is a deeply impressive document that puts to shame the vapid pronouncements of the other Catholic bishops of England and Wales.
Bishop O'Donoghue's remarks, together with the outcry over the shocking behaviour of the Diocese of Leeds in closing much-loved churches, should give us grounds for hope.
At long last, the Magic Circle of liberal bishops – who set up the Church's waffling Left-wing bureaucracy – is coming under serious pressure. Now we need an Archbishop of Westminster who will break it up and liberate the faithful.
Source: Holy Smoke - Damian Thompson
