The Year of Who? You? Who Knew? (updated: 15/12/15)

Apologies. We just couldn't resist!

You know, just for a moment, we genuinely thought that the Church of Pope Francis had finally gone into super-turbo-charged anthropocentricity...and perhaps you can forgive us for fearing that an inevitably humanist end-point had finally been reached.

But, phew, we now see that it's just the most deliciously ironic "Year of Mercy" graphic design blooper on our archdiocesan website.

That's all it is, isn't it?

Yeah, of course it is.

Isn't it?

SEARCHING FOR THE ARCHBISHOP (10) - Re: The Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy 2015/16; His Grace's pointed signal to the Archdiocese; limited remarks only; Notes #11

Leaving aside the significant reservations that we – and many across the Traditional Catholic world (e.g. this from Rorate Caeli) – have concerning the "Year of Mercy", which began on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception last week, we wish to place on record the measured, succinct and very pastoral words of His Grace The Archbishop to mark the start of this extraordinary jubilee.

The Prayer for the Jews - Re. their Lordships' belief that it needs to be "reviewed" (yet again!); the telling contradictory views, beyond the grave, of one of C20th England's staunchest Catholic liberals

“Pope John gave us an indication of his own frame of mind on the subject when he had the formula praying for the 'perfidious Jews' removed from the Easter liturgy. Since then the Jews have been prayed for in the same manner as everybody else and without any insulting adjectives.”
– Norman St John-Stevas

We offer a different – probably unique – though very illuminating and contemporaneous perspective on the petty nonsense peddled by the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales late last month, who effectively called for the abolition of the already thrice revised Prayer for the Jews (last re-written in 2008 by Pope Benedict XVI), as currently used in the Extraordinary Form (EF) of the Solemn Good Friday liturgy (per the 1962 Missal of Pope St John XXIII), and presumably for it to be replaced by that currently used in the Ordinary Form (OF) liturgy (per the 1970 Missal of Blessed Pope Paul VI).

SEARCHING FOR THE ARCHBISHOP (9) - Re: Pastoral Letter, Advent, 2015; limited remarks only; Notes #10

The underscored emphases are ours.

"What does the Jubilee of Mercy have to do with our preparations for ‘the coming of Jesus’? Well, let us think what happened to the world at the first Christmas. We say it at Mass every Sunday: the Son of God "was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man"; in the Apostles' Creed it is simpler: Jesus Christ was "born of the Virgin Mary". It does no harm to let that sink in, because it is astonishing to claim that God "shared our human nature" (Eucharistic Prayer IV). God can seem so far from our daily life, but he could not have come closer to us than by becoming one of us."

– Most Reverend Malcolm McMahon OP Archbishop of Liverpool; Pastoral Letter for the Second Sunday of Advent, 2015

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We refer readers back to the first, and what we believe was one of the most telling, posts we have published thus far in our year-long and ongoing "search". A far from insignificant instance.