Three days after his enthronement as Archbishop of Liverpool, in May 2014, His Grace, the Most Rev. Malcolm McMahon, was interviewed by the broadcaster and journalist, Edward Stourton, a known Catholic progressive. Amongst other things, the pair spoke about the, then forthcoming, Synod on the Family due to take place at the Vatican in October 2014 and their expectations of the event. Stourton exhibited a received knowledge that His Grace had already expressed a view that he was "expecting great things" from the Synod. This undoubtedly referred to an interview His Grace had given, whilst he was still Archbishop-designate of Liverpool, several weeks earlier, to the liberal, London-based, weekly Catholic news magazine, The Tablet, of which Stourton is a trustee. The Archbishop did not challenge Stourton's assertion regarding the attributable "expecting great things" quote. The blog The Sensible Bond, provided a good commentary at the time on certain salient extracts from His Grace's interview with Stourton and for good measure offered some (admittedly unsupportable) insights into what may have been the background process behind the appointment of His Grace as the ninth Archbishop of Liverpool.
At time of writing, the interview is still available on BBC iPlayer:
His Grace features from 36 mins 25 seconds.
Without further commentary from Liverpolitanus, we provide a fuller transcript of the discussion as it pertains to Church matters (part of the conversation referring to the 1989 Hillsborough Disaster, and the ongoing inquests into the same, has not been included).
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Edward Stourton:
Let’s talk a bit about Liverpool, I said it had loomed large in the landscape of the Roman Catholic Church but I’m just looking at the figures for ordinations in the archdiocese which - I think you’ve got a couple next month - but by and large they’ve been running at roughly one-a-year for the last decade…
His Grace:
I haven’t…I haven’t looked at them yet so you’re ahead of me…
ES:
…well you’re familiar with the problem I’m alluding to?
HG:
…I am, of course I am. It’s a general one throughout the Catholic Church in England and Wales…erm, we really have to do something better on that front which we – somehow re-energise the way in which we recruit future priests but, erm…but we also need to have the…get people, ordinary people in the Church, to understand that they also have a very, very positive role which they should be carrying out which is given them by virtue of their baptism…so we’re doing a lot of work on pastoral formation of lay people within the Church and that is making a big difference.
ES:
And do you think, to use the Prime Minister’s phrase, that we are a Christian country?
HG:
I think we have a Christian heritage and we - and many people have a Christian view of the society in which we live – so if those two things add up to being a Christian country then we probably are.
(The interview then discussed the ongoing inquests into the 1989 Hillsborough Disaster.)
Resuming:
ES:
Let me turn to more general Church matters. There’s a Synod on the Family, as we know, coming up in Rome later this year and you’ve said that you’re expecting great things from that. As preparation for it, Catholics all over the world were asked what they thought about some quite sensitive issues including contraception, divorce, that kind of thing and we’ve, I appealed for emails from people who might have questions for you, and one of them has emailed in and said “please can you ask him when the bishops plan to publish the results of the questionnaire on the family…
HG:
Well, I’m sure they will be published in due course, but the simple answer is I don’t know when they’re going to be published…
ES:
…do you think they should be published?
HG:
I think the results are, were very mixed because of the nature of the questionnaire which wasn’t kind of designed by MORI or one of the, you know, international pollsters, so it was actually quite difficult to bring together the results. So the reply which the Bishops of England and Wales has submitted to Rome, based on all the, er, responses from the dioceses has been more discursive in nature rather than lots of numbers and so on, so it’s erm…what it does do, though, I can assure everyone is to actually relate quite clearly what the situation is here in England and Wales.
ES:
And as you know, who...a lot of people, a lot of Catholics in England and Wales disagree with the Church on some of these issues, and you yourself have talked about one in particular which is communion for people who have been divorced and remarried - erm, can you be absolutely clear with us what your view on that is? Do you think the Church’s teaching should change so that it’s possible for those people to take communion?
HG:
The Church’s teaching on this has always been based on the people themselves and it goes right back to the early teaching in the Church, right back to St Paul really, and er, it was really based on the behaviour of the people and the way in which they take Christian teaching into their hearts and try to live it. Now that’s always the way it’s been. Now I think what’s happening now is that in modern society things have changed, like marriage and so on, it er, the way in which it’s practiced has changed a great deal. And what we need to do is to look at that carefully and discern where the, once again, where the truth is in the persons’ relationships and also we er…
ES:
So just a, just a short answer to my question that, yes, you would like to see a change…
HG:
I would like to see it developed. I wouldn’t - you see there’s another side to this which is our understanding of the Eucharist, because the Church doesn’t exist to exclude people, it exists to include people and that is what the Eucharist is about. So I would like personally to see more work done on that so that we can have an understanding which would embrace more people.
ES:
And people are going to be disappointed if they don’t see something happen at that Synod aren’t they?
HG:
I think people are going to be disappointed if they don’t see certain things happening, yeah. And not at, just at that Synod, but in the Church in general, yeah.
ES:
An interesting note on which to leave it…
HG:
Hmmm
ES:
...I’d like to explore that with you and I’m sure we will again. Archbishop Malcolm McMahon, congratulations on your new job and thank you.
HG:
Thank you very much indeed and for asking me to speak to you today. Bye.
