Before reading this lengthy post, we would ask you to consider signing the following Citizen Go petition: link here if you haven't already done so. It concerns the repulsive events that have very recently come to light at the Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Primary School, Atherton, Wigan, in this very archdiocese; also the duties we now expect of His Grace The Most Rev. Malcolm McMahon OP, the ninth Archbishop of Liverpool, to defend Catholic Truth. Although this post is not a direct commentary on that obscene matter at Atherton, our readers will detect some very bitter ironies and connections. It's all part of the same toxicity. Also, counter-intuitively, we draw your immediate attention to the explanatory note (text marked in deep red) that we have included at the foot of this post before you read on.
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Advice: this post (12.3.2) is the third of a sub-set within a broader Series. It can be read either as a standalone commentary or in the light of the first two parts (Link 12.1), (Link 12.2) and (Link 12.3.1)
i. Introduction
"Creator God".
Just two small words – albeit with ultimate import for the entire cosmological order.
Theologically sound, too.
Apparently.
For context is everything.
Especially when those words were conveniently (ab)used to form the opening of the official prayer of the infamous Nottingham Diocesan Assembly (NDA) – which commenced in 2002, was still belching dissent in 2008, and begat tentacles that poison even today.
Scandalous that two holy words could deceptively mask layers of compact defiance.
It may seem improbable to seriously allege that so much sinister significance could be loaded into so small a term (phraseologically speaking).
They were just two words of 10 letters after all. In clear praise of Almighty God.
What could possibly be hidden?
But that's the surface deniability, cloaked in sickly plausibility, that's long been a favourite "Exhibit A" Modernist machination.
It's generally prone to exposure, though, because it often leaves a fetid trail. What the Modernist expects, however, is that nobody undertakes the unpleasant and arduous effort to sniff back to source.
Well, it's a dirty job...
Having said that, certain media parties – most notably Christian Order and the Catholic Herald – did, to greater or lesser extents, unmask elements of the noxiousness that was the NDA. Largely, though, especially beyond the Nottingham diocesan area, much of what occurred from early last decade in that territory escaped many commentators' attention.
Yet it really was as pernicious a period as we suggest. When overlapping agendas – the usual liberal hiss-ues – were conveniently woven to procure a perfect storm of episcopally-facilitated revolt.
By unpicking the thinly-veiled stitching covering those two opening words of the NDA official prayer, the shameful deceit beneath bursts forth chaotically like an unsprung cartoon mattress; uncoiled grievances, feminist foaming, puffed-up politics and sham spuriousness furiously shrieks apart in every demonic direction.
Make no mistake, those two words were not posited positively, to affirm the universal prowess of God the Father.
Rather, “Creator God”, per the NDA, was an entirely negative circumvention, if not outright omission, of Catholic Truth and an implicit denial of the Trinity into the nauseating admix.
And the primary cause of it all was His Lordship The Rt Rev. Malcolm McMahon OP, ninth Bishop of Nottingham –– who has since been made, in 2014, the ninth Archbishop of Liverpool, hence our reasoning behind this study which we have adequately explained in many previous posts but most particularly the one immediately prior to this (we link again).
For it was the then newly consecrated Bishop McMahon of Nottingham who "opened the windows" (a famous phrase) back in 2001/02 to an Assembly of Agitation.
And he surely knew what type of encouraged stench would inevitably blow back.
Impossible to conclude otherwise.
ii. Calling an "Assembly"
It's not too difficult to guess as to why the then Bishop McMahon felt the immediate need to call a Nottingham "Assembly". For in the year prior to his episcopal consecration, the diocese had boasted but two priestly ordinations. They would join 148 secular, 59 religious and 19 retired diocesan priests, plus 14 permanent deacons serving a weekly Mass attendance of circa 41,000 (from an estimated Catholic population of 144,000) across 180 churches, chapels or convents in an area of some 13,000km2. Too many locations and too few priests serving an aggregate congregation spread too broadly and thinly to be sustainable. So, whilst the legendary "fruits of Vatican II" were still being awaited (35 years and counting at that point) the figures were headed only one way – and rapidly.
We only sketch post-conciliar Catholicism in England & Wales. Nottingham, of course, wasn't alone, for the same rot had already well set-in across all of the English and Welsh Catholic dioceses (and, let's face it, the entire north western Catholic world). Nonetheless, His Lordship of Nottingham, now His Grace of Liverpool, decided that something must be done.
Assembly!
We stress "Assembly" not "Synod". It's an important distinction (more later).
Cue every dissenting rank bursting out of diocesan-file to lay bare all of the head-slappingly obvious "how did we ever miss them?" solutions for the local faithful to embrace.
In no particular (dis)order:
• let women be ordained • let priests get married • give communion to remarried divorcees whose first marriage was valid and whose spouses are still alive • dismiss the notion of sin concerning the domestic coupling and genital activities of those with same-sex attraction • in fact dismiss sin and heresy full stop • get real about contraception • accept the necessity of abortion • approve priestless parishes • get cool about so-called "transgenderism, transsexualism, bisexualism" and any other dreamt-up-on-the-spot "trans-category-ism" • forget liturgical rubrics • make pinko-progressio-naive-neo-colonial Justizz-n-Peace issues – especially giving condoms to "Central Americans" and "Africans" (good luck with that in the Sahel!) – the overwhelming diocesan priority • ignore Rome at all costs (the irony!) • and embrace the new-fangled Internet by ensuring every parish has a website (preferably including info-links to all manner of left-dominated issues, the more Marxist the better, especially those in support of all the above dissent)...
...oh and one last thing: accept that God the Father is a woman. Don't call Him him.
For "God is She".
Okay, they said, we begrudgingly accept "Lord" – but that's different of course (i.e. a tad awkward to argue against this side of the Incarnation ... but, hey, never put anything past them!).
So, a compromise: if the She Father was to be called anything, then first call "Her" ... "Creator God", and then "Lord".
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| The Nottingham Diocesan Assembly Prayer: a Modernist model of plausible deniability |
You may think we exaggerate? Well read on.
So, leaving aside the bit about the Internet and having parish websites (all very post-millennium stuff and easily understandable), that whole gamut of gripes above has been the progressive shopping-list of Nu-Church hopes for pretty much the last half-century, and then some.
As such, the only conclusion to draw about any post-conciliar bishop who has ever seen fit to call an Assembly-style (again note: not "Synod") event in his diocese (especially the type of "open forum and big conversation", Blairism-maxed fest that Bishop McMahon insisted upon) is that he must occupy one of two episcopal camps when it comes to arranging such big statement "gatherings". There are those wise enough to anticipate that even the merest whiff of open congress is enough to unleash the dissenting hounds-of-hell (surely indicative, in that case, of implicit Ordinary support enabling a groundswell to brew). Or there are those so despairingly naive that they would never in a month of Protestant Sundays foresee the bile they were inviting forth (surely indicative, in that case, of an Ordinary that shouldn't be in episcopal purple to begin with, on the grounds of ingenuousness).
We see no other alternative scenarios.
Either His Grace, from his earliest Nottingham days, knew exactly what he was getting himself into and was fully prepared for the "conversation", or he was too starry-eyed to see the blindingly obvious.
Well, whatever doubts we have about His Grace, one thing we do know: he's been around the block. And we're not just referring to his London buses days.
We simply cannot believe that he didn't know precisely what would ensue from the moment he called "Ready, Steady, Assembly".
But there are several other contextual elements to consider. We will touch on them all in this lengthy analysis. We would encourage those who have taken against Liverpolitanus to read them all. Refute our allegations and we'll gladly publish what we receive. Indeed, let's have a "conversation" like His Grace encouraged in Nottingham. Public anonymity guaranteed if you wish.
iii. The background to, and timing of, NDA events
As our previous posts have underscored, His Grace knew that his Nottingham flock was under the, apparently false, impression that he was pro- so-called "women priests". To recap (but as our previous posts have covered in extenso): he gave a (twice published in diocesan organs) media interview in early 2001 in which, he later claimed, he had stated that he was against female ordination, only for the exact opposite to have been printed; yet he failed to publicly clarify the matter (to anyone outside of the Vatican that is) until 2008.
Thus, for seven years (2001-08), Nottingham progressives felt the episcopal wind behind them (doctrine being irrelevant in the agitators' world where sentiment, din and opinion trumps all). So they seized their moment with even greater gusto than they surely would have anyway. His Grace will have known this. Thick if he didn't. Thick he is not.
Also, given that he had already seen, apparently, just how capable the progressive factions were of wilfully distorting things to their advantage (again – let's just revisit what we're meant to believe: that he apparently told his interviewers, at a diocesan youth magazine, that he was against so-called "women priests", yet they published the total opposite!; and this was then reprinted in the diocesan newspaper!) you would imagine that he would have been somewhat twice-bitten-thrice-shy.
But no. An Assembly it would be. And an "open forum" at that.
And what spilled forth was rather more in-keeping with the attitude of a bishop who actually was/is pro-"women priests", rather than one who (as we were later told in 2008) said he was/is completely orthodox on the matter and, therefore, would have been most irked that the twice published record had stated otherwise.
Quite why, then, he opted to leave things publicly uncorrected for almost eight years – i.e. through a diocesan Assembly and out the other side – is a complete mystery. To some.
It is important to reconsider the specific chronology. Bishop McMahon was consecrated in December 2000. It was then only a matter of five months before he was twice, apparently falsely, reported (spring 2001) to be in favour of female ordination. Yet by spring 2002, just a further year later, we know from archive reports that dissenters such as those in the Catholic Women's Network (CWN) were already knowingly preparing to infiltrate the well publicised and forthcoming NDA with their priestess perversions (more later).
Therefore, it is clear that His Grace must have decided sometime in mid-to-late 2001 (i.e. still in his very earliest days in Nottingham – and we suspect we know when), and regardless of being apparently stung by those highly damaging and botched media reports presenting him an arch liberal dissenter rather than a reliably orthodox pastor, to hold a defining diocesan occasion. Hardly a moment had been wasted between his consecration and the announcement of the Assembly, scheduled to be held at Loughborough University in September 2003 – but only after having benefited from, or been corrosively shaped by, a prolonged, at least 18 month, preparation (read agitation) period.
Viewed in that chronological context, His Grace's failure to correct his stance against female ordination was even more telling. For even in the ordinary course of events, he should have, without delay, moved to publicly correct the record, sometime during spring 2001, following those two damaging and apparently entirely erroneous interviews (especially given that the second iteration was re-published in the Nottingham Catholic newspaper!). However, in the extraordinarily heightened and long-lead atmosphere prior to a diocesan Assembly (that he obviously knew sometime in 2001 that he would be calling) his clarification should have merited even greater urgency to avoid total scandal.
The reality is that he singularly failed (until 2008) to state what he said was the truth: that he had been completely misrepresented back in 2001.
Thus, everyone connected with the Bad Ship NDA – all who railed in her – harboured the misapprehension that he was pro-"women priests" for almost eight years: from spring 2001 until autumn 2008 (the latter being a key date - more later).
Therefore, the scandal and fall-out of those two published interviews provided the chronological book-ends for the entire span of the NDA and its "pastoral plan" fruits. For at one period end, i.e. spring 2001, came the episode of his being twice "misquoted" saying he was in favour of female ordination, which was roughly around the same time that he started to formulate the plans to call the rotten Assembly. Then, at the other end, i.e. autumn 2008, he finally moved to publicly clarify the whole matter but only did so following the published blur of clip-art that was the "final review" of the "Assembly/pastoral plan" proceedings that he had initiated almost eight years earlier.
We'll leave readers to judge for themselves as to why His Grace evidently felt unable, between 2001 and 2008, to publicly state that he was orthodox on the matter of female ordination.
iv. Failing to prevent a scandal
We turn now to other pertinent contexts.
It's possible, using the Christian Order (CO) and Catholic Herald (CH) archives, to parse the initial Assembly events in Nottingham, circa 2001-03, into some sort of sequential (dis)order. It is absolutely clear from those contemporaneous accounts that even from the very nascent stages of the NDA, progressive factions were energised, mobilised and aligned to shrill their voices as loudly as possible. Emboldened by their new bishop's apparently overt stance in favour of female ordination, the Modernist army implicitly knew the sub-text drill: that it only takes one liberally-aired issue of dissent (i.e. presumed Ordinary support for female ordination) to invite the whole treacherous train in its wake (same-sex agitation usually being in the very next carriage, followed by abortion, contraception, married priests blahblahblah...all the usual things that one can be easily satisfied by at the Church of England café which must be flourishing!).
We know that the foment began oozing toxins into Bishop McMahon's desired "open conversation" in early 2002. As mentioned earlier, the CH (July 2002) was reporting how the CWN was quite open about how it had already been busily working behind the scenes to bring its agenda to the NDA. The newspaper was also reporting that (and again, this is reflecting the diocesan mood in the earliest parts of 2002 – i.e. still some 14-18 months prior to the actual event) the Assembly would be considering the subject of “God the Mother”. The CO reports synthesised all of this 2002 activity within its two reports given in December 2002 and especially February 2003. If you haven't already read those two links that we have published several times in our previous posts, then take the time to do so now. As we have said before, we are not precious about readers leaving this site in order to arm themselves with the correct information; further we favour an "information portal" style of presentation on Liverpolitanus. We trust you to return. The journalist, Joanna Bogle, writing for Women for Faith and Family, was also reflecting in early 2003 the events that had obviously already well unfolded in Nottingham during 2002. We're grateful to them all.
It is also evident from the above linked CO report of February 2003 (so that was some seven months prior to the Assembly event) that sometime during 2002 the official NDA website must have first been published to chronicle ongoing discussions and preparations that were already underway in parishes across the diocese ahead of the official autumn 2003 congress at Loughborough. The website, we are told, was swift to proclaim that – reflecting the so-called "feedback" from the launch materials that had been circulated around the diocese – the NDA would be discussing "a range" of so-called "issues concerning the Universal Church" which it said "effect (sic) our parishes and diocese and also have implications for the wider Church". The website was completely erased from cyber-history several years ago but, according to the CO's contemporaneous report, these spurious "issues" included:
• the ordination of women;
• married clergy and priestly celibacy;
• the need for clarity regarding the divorced and re-married;
• questions regarding the Church and homosexuality; and
• the challenge of holding the tension between "fidelity to tradition" and "compassion"
Like we said, some 18 months of "preparation" and "consulting" was a dangerously long time for the diocesan pot to be stirred.
Based on what His Grace publicly said in 2008 – i.e. when he finally declared that he was against female ordination and had been "misquoted" in 2001 – we posit a reasonable retrospective context of those pre-Assembly dissent days of 2002.
For if he knew that he had been wrongly portrayed (we would say betrayed if the information we are given is correct) back in 2001 as being pro-"women priests" (leaving aside that he inexplicably chose not to correct the record for almost eight years), and if, for argument's sake, he naively called a diocesan Assembly and wasn't expecting the revolting dissent that spewed forth, then we can only conclude that he must surely then have felt doubly stung by yet another betrayal in the pre-Assembly period. In other words, to compound the bitter upset that he must surely and logically have experienced at the rank and deliberate disloyalty shown to him in 2001, we can only conclude that he again felt that he had to watch on passively, just a year later, as those mobilising groups swiftly took Judas-like advantage of his decision to hold an "open forum" event by hijacking it to ensure that the diocese was placed on a heightened state of heresy for the thick end of 18 months.
If we're missing something then please tell us.
However, like he left the erroneous record of his views on female ordination to stand uncorrected for almost eight years, he also quiescently allowed the prep-period fury of the NDA to rage on without episcopal correction.
Thus, we are led to believe that in the 18 months between his December 2000 episcopal consecration, and through the double publication in spring 2001 of his wrongly stated views on female ordination, and then on to July 2002 when the NDA dissent was in full vent, Bishop McMahon had been scandalously betrayed three times but still opted to do nothing in his power to either correct or completely bring to a halt these publicly evident scandals.
Again, we leave it to our readers to wonder why he allowed the NDA preparation agenda to be so openly commandeered for at least 18 months prior to the actual event.
Time and again, it would appear that His Grace, had he wished, could have stopped the venom rising in his diocese. Repeatedly he failed. Even if he was naive about the extent to which the NDA had been hijacked he still had ample warning (i.e. in early 2002) prior to the actual event in September 2003.
Question: if a pilot, knowing terrorists are aboard, announces on the tannoy that the cockpit doors are open and all are welcome to enter, and the bad guys eagerly do so: does that still qualify as a "hijacking"?
By September 2002, so exactly one year prior to the official event (again according to CO records, citing the CH), it indisputably became known that the Assembly’s official study programme was specifically referring to God as “She”.
Ergo, not God the Father but Creator God ... as Theo-illogical a compromise as you'll ever get!
The matter caused such a stink (rightfully) that in the ensuing "Pastoral Plan" (more later) that was the chief fruit of the "Assembly" (published at Advent 2004) a very specifically worded "Diocesan Mission Statement" (we said it was Blairism-maxed!) – finally referring to God the Father and the Trinity – was shoehorned on to Pg 3 of the document, but only following on from the "Creator God" official "Assembly Prayer" that led the document on Pg 2.
The Nottingham Diocesan Mission Statement, for the record:
"We are a people called to be a visible and active sign of the unity and life that God the Father offers to the human race through Christ, in the working of the Holy Spirit."
It also emerged, for certain, later in 2002 (again from CO, citing the CH) that the Assembly would indeed discuss so-called women priests.
The same archived CO/CH sources also show that the "handbook" for the Assembly (produced by Redemptorist Publications; alarm bells clanging there) not only contained agitation about female ordination but also included a deliberately deceitful prompt for the "open forum", "conversation" styled gathering to discuss:
Is it wrong to even question the doctrine of the all-male priesthood?
We can guess at the official diocesan explanation/excuse: "We're only reflecting 'feedback' - it's Christian courtesy. It's just a conversation. Everyone's views are valid."
v. "Is it wrong to even discuss it?"
The "is it wrong to even discuss it [female ordination]?" aspect is really one of the most disturbing elements of the whole NDA prep-period of circa 2001/02 and not just because of the open, published and freely circulated dissent, all of which clearly carried episcopal approval.
For, as we have already alluded to, there are further contextual aspects of the NDA that should be explored and have been lost in the unfolding fog of the last 16 or so years.
We know from His Grace's own records that, as the representative of the Bishops of England & Wales, he spent several weeks in autumn 2001 in close proximity to His Holiness Pope Saint John Paul II at the Synod of Bishops in Rome held between September 30th and October 27th of that year, at which, incidentally, the Relator Adjunct was none other than His Eminence Jorge Mario Cardinal Bergoglio SJ, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina, the future Pope Francis.
The theme of that X Ordinary General Assembly was "The Bishop: Servant of the Gospel of Jesus Christ for the Hope of the World". Whilst the 1998 produced Lineamenta for the Synod didn't specifically devote a chapter-section to the subject of a "Diocesan Synod" (we re-emphasise that precise term; n.b. not "Diocesan Assembly"), the later Instrumentum Laboris (2001) did and quite tellingly. Moreover, we suspect that it was indeed during this period of episcopal emphasis on all things "Diocesan Synod" that the still newly consecrated Bishop McMahon – at the very latest – set his mind firmly and finally on convoking just such an occasion in Nottingham. Well, after a fashion. For what was conveniently to be held in Nottingham wasn't a canonically appropriate and regulated "Synod" but an altogether looser and very fluidly and deliberately titled "Assembly" (more later).
In an article which is still hosted on the official website of the Dominican Friars of England and Scotland titled "The Listening Pope", penned in the immediate aftermath of the death of His Holiness Pope St John Paul II in April 2005, Bishop McMahon, then some four-and-a-half years into his Nottingham bishopric, and right in the central midst of the pastoral fallout of the NDA, reflected on his time at the 2001 Synod and particularly the example he saw being set by the Pontiff that autumn.
The Holy Father, said Bishop McMahon, "was a man of prayer and he was also a listener".
An irony seemed to be that he was lauding the same Pope who, seven years prior to the inception of the NDA (which would pathetically, with finger-to-bottom-lip like a child, and wide-eyed faux innocence, nauseatingly ask whether it was wrong to "even question it?") had shut the debate down forever about the infallibly-set doctrine of the all-male priesthood in the shape of his Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (1994).
In two paragraphs which should have been branded by hot-iron on the forearm of every dissenter involved in the despicable NDA, His Holiness had written (section 4) (but with our bold and underlined emphases):
"Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church's judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force.
"Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful."
Which particular part of the bold and underlined words above, from Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, did Bishop McMahon and the NDA misunderstand?
Forgive our cynicism – and we believe we're actually being quite restrained – but we would suggest that His Holiness "the listener" really couldn't have made as much of an impact on Bishop McMahon in 2001 as the latter went on to claim four years later. For even as the Nottingham bishop was watching on in those autumn 2001 synodal days, as the Pope went about his business in the fora, he was forming active mental plans to betray him back in his own diocese by levering open the papally-closed lid of the hell-sponsored debate about so-called "women priests".
A listening Pope, certainly. No reciprocal evidence of a listening bishop.
vi. Meeting the Pope
Further in that same 2005 panegyric concerning the late pontiff, Bishop McMahon then recalled that he had been one of the few bishops of England and Wales granted with/summonsed to (we wonder!) a private audience with His Holiness during their October 2003 ad limina visit – which, incidentally, was exactly one month after the NDA event at Loughborough. We repeat: just one month later.
It was an eventful time in any case for our bishops to be in Rome. For whilst there, they were able to attend and witness the beatification of Blessed Mother Teresa. Their visit also coincided with the much delayed (though given its depth and length it was understandable) publication of Pastores gregis (PG), His Holiness' post-Synodal exhortation following the aforementioned events of autumn 2001. The papal document addressed the subject of "The Bishop, Servant of the Gospel of Jesus Christ for the Hope of the World".
It was hardly surprising that in his ad limina address to the Bishops of England & Wales, just a week later, His Holiness made frequent reference to PG. In saying that both of those British nations "despite being steeped in a rich Christian heritage, today face the pervasive advance of secularism" and that "the faithful of England and Wales look to you with great expectation to preach and teach the Gospel which dispels the darkness and illuminates the way of life," His Holiness specifically and forcefully pointed to PG (as well as the documents of Vatican II – the very event, of course, which the bishops had long since claimed to have set great store by; also the then 10-year-old Catechism of the Catholic Church) as the path(s) they must follow.
Contemporaneous commentary was undecided about whether our bishops had been papally rebuked, mildly or otherwise. What was beyond debate was that they had been given an unambiguous lesson.
His Holiness said: Bishops, called by Christ to be teachers of the truth, “have the obligation of fostering and safeguarding the unity of faith and of upholding the discipline which is common to the whole Church” (Lumen Gentium, 23). It is by fidelity to the ordinary Magisterium of the Church, by strict adherence to the discipline of the universal Church, and by positive statements which clearly instruct the faithful, that a Bishop preserves God’s people from deviations and defections and guarantees them the objective possibility of professing the true faith without error (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 890).
To repeat: there was a need for our bishops to practice "strict adherence to the discipline of the universal Church" and have pastoral care to protect the faithful from "deviations and defections". Argue all you want about whether Their Lordships were scolded by His Holiness back in 2003 but the shameful fact is that they needed to be reminded by St Peter's successor of the duties of "Being a Bishop 101".
Bishop McMahon said he was "one of the few" English and Welsh bishops to meet privately, for 15 minutes by his acount, with His Holiness during their October 2003 ad limina (again, this was just one month after the NDA). Interesting. According to his aforementioned article "The Listening Pope", Bishop McMahon again encountered, as he had during the 2001 Synod, "the quiet, recollected, listening pastor."
His recollections continued: "He heard what I had to say and then asked me two questions: one was about Leicester that he heard was likely to be the first Asian-majority city in England. Was this a problem or an opportunity? I replied that we were blessed by excellent inter-faith relations, that the Catholic Asian community principally from Goa and the Philippines had been a great strength to us, and I assured him that our brothers and sisters from other cultures enriched our society and our church. Then he changed tack. He asked me, 'What are the young people of the diocese doing about evangelisation?' I found that question challenging and a gift. I like to think that that is John Paul's legacy to the Diocese of Nottingham. It is a gift because it makes us all, young or old, think deeply about our commitment to evangelisation; and it is a challenge because it shows how much John Paul understood young people and the way in which they above all others can convey the spirit and message of Jesus Christ to each other."
Interesting that His Holiness purposefully demonstrated an acute appreciation of matters unfolding in the Diocese of Nottingham. It can be assumed, then, that he will have known all about the NDA of just one month earlier (not least via certain media channels but also via the many letters that we know were sent to Rome exposing the unfolding agenda of the Nottingham dissent fest). Intriguing, also, that the Pope asked about the diocesan youth, given that it was a youth group that had, apparently, deliberately distorted Bishop McMahon's quotes on the matter of female ordination just two years earlier.
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| The Catholic Herald: 11 October, 2003 |
To understand two further contextual aspects of Bishop McMahon's 15 minutes with the Pope, it's necessary to briefly fast-forward to late 2008, three and a half years into the pontificate of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI. For it was in the November that year, in an interview with the Telegraph/Sunday Telegraph that Bishop McMahon finally publicly clarified his views on female ordination (i.e. being against it – but at the same time clearly agitating for the relaxation of priestly celibacy!). It was only then that British Catholics learned that, whilst they had been left for almost eight years (i.e. March 2001-November 2008) under the misapprehension that Bishop McMahon was pro-"women priests", the Vatican had not. For it seemed, from that 2008 newspaper report, that sometime in 2002 Bishop McMahon opted to/was summonsed to meet the future Pope – the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – and explain that he wasn't in favour of female ordination and how he had been deviously "misquoted" in 2001 by the renegade youth of the Nottingham diocese (a subject we have well covered) who should have published what they were apparently told: that their bishop was a staunch defender of the all-male priesthood. It is therefore improbable to believe that when Bishop McMahon met/was summonsed to sit with Pope Saint John Paul II in 2003, in those "15 minutes", that the then reigning pontiff hadn't been adequately briefed by his No.2, Cardinal Ratzinger.
We cannot know what the true mood of the Holy See was at that precise point regarding disobedient bishops but, in addition to considering the contents of PG, and the precise phrasing of His Holiness' ad limina message to the bishops of England and Wales, it's perhaps also salutary to reflect on the severe public humiliation contemporaneously handed out by the Vatican – (in the very same week that Bishop McMahon spent "15 minutes" with the Pope) – to the then Cardinal-designate, the Most Rev. Archbishop Keith O'Brien of St Andrew's and Edinburgh. For, coincidentally, it would seem that the Scottish Cardinal-in-waiting had, like Bishop McMahon, also suffered from some media misquotation on issues of dissent (however the Scottish Catholic Media Office preferred the term "misinformed coverage" about his "position" which had been, apparently, "misinterpreted"). This specifically concerned the subjects of contraception, priests with same-sex attraction and their sexual activities, and priestly celibacy. It appeared that earlier that month, in fact just a day after having been announced as a future Prince of the Church, the Scottish Archbishop astonishingly called for the Vatican to hold a "full and honest discussion" about those issues. Accordingly, he was asked to make a "highly particular" Profession of Faith and specifically register his support for Church teaching on those three matters. Failing that, he would be denied the cardinalate. The Vatican, however, didn't anticipate how circuitous the Scot could be and assumed that he would have implicitly understood that the Profession of Faith needed to be public. With typical arrogance, Archbishop O'Brien opted to make a private Profession of Faith, apparently including the elements required, on October 7th. Thankfully, Rome saw right through this and so ordered him to re-make the act, in public (after a fashion), by reciting the same text before the canons of his cathedral chapter. Sadly, we now all know the lamentable end-story of Cardinal O'Brien who was eventually stripped of his "red hat" in any case, a year ago this month, after a series of exposés – which first emerged on the eve of the conclave that elected Pope Francis in 2013, in which he declined to participate – which revealed that, all along, he had been an active participant in same-sex genital activities. Indeed right throughout his priesthood.
Of course, and without digressing too far from our subject, many people – those who still haven't realised that sometimes it's as simple as adding 2+2 – will ask why, given the signals that Archbishop O'Brien was sending in 2003, the Vatican not only eventually elevated him to the cardinalate but why he was earmarked to begin with? We at Liverpolitanus fully understand that certain Traditional Catholic channels are refreshing in their plain-speak and truly despair of those who still haven't grasped that Holy Church is, and has been for decades, in the grip of a "homoheresy" that dictates its affairs daily. There's no getting away from that brutal reality. For a well-honed "rainbow culture" seams its way through from the highest points of the Church to the lowest humdrum local levels. Homo-toxicity lurks in every corner – of every nation, diocese and almost every parish and school. It uses dog-whistle protocol and is structured so that it can be easily denied. Nonetheless, it often appears hidden in plain sight (except when it deliberately smacks you in the face!) – that's if you are dubiously equipped to know what clues to look for and how; e.g. a loose word here, an effete nod or phrase there, a fey stance in unguarded moments elsewhere. Mercifully, not every faithful and Traditional Catholic detects such depressing realities. This is a good (well we think so); that their sight is still so blessedly veiled. Sadly, though, it then remains for those docile and good souls to wonder how the Church has been so usurped for so long, especially concerning episcopal appointments that simply do not make sense. On the contrary, though, they well make sense. Totally. And these signs are blindingly indicative of the intensifying supernatural war, aided by the myriad pests on earth, being waged against the Church every living mili-second.
Although it may take decades to flush this filth out, it is re-assuring that many "people of goodwill" around the Traditional Catholic world are now in the business of slowly joining-the-dots in response to Fr Dariusz Oko and the clarion he issued, in his game-changing 2012 essay "With the Pope Against the Homoheresy", for the "global network of homolobbies and homomafias" to be counterbalanced by "a global network of decent people". It's a grinding process, obviously, but those who are bewildered and heartbroken at the filth that currently despoils the Church should be comforted that the unmonitored days of the rampant homoheresy are over. The fiends still control, no doubt, and they surely still will, with complacent hubris, for some time (we pray for this trial to be shortened). But the stealthy fightback has now been underway for four years, at least. The enemy is now monitored. It is but the start of an uphill process to rid the Church of at least 60 years of "rainbow culture". No matter how small a part they may ultimately play, no matter how small a cog in the global response, each individual in that "large group of people of goodwill" that Fr Oko called for is already active in-the-field (they receive their marshalling orders from Christ) and committed to spending the rest of their Catholic lives helping to obliterate this poison. And they, too, often operate hidden in plain sight!
In Fr Oko's words: "That group should include clergymen, as high in the hierarchy as possible, experts in various fields, archive records specialists, lawyers, policemen, journalists, and as many believers as possible. It is good to exchange information, documents, evidence. The global network of the homolobbies and homomafias must be counterbalanced by a network of honest people. An excellent tool that can be used here is the Internet, which makes it possible to create a global community of people concerned about the fate of the Church, who have resolved to oppose homoideology and homoheresy. The more we know, the more we can do."
Quite.
Things will inevitably worsen in the short-term. But the fightback has started. The battle will be won. It may not even be in our lifetime. But won it will be. Bit by bit.
Anyway, we just thought we'd re-publicise Fr Oko's call at this particular juncture. As good a time as any.
So, lest we accuse ourselves of digression ... we return to Bishop McMahon's "15 minutes" with Pope St John Paul II in that tumultuous Roman October of 2003.
It's clear from all that we've laid out above that the Holy See was actively clamping down on dissent at that time, in that very month, in fact in that very week. Some 13 years on, given what we all know now, it's obvious that the most senior figures in the Church (including the then current and ailing pontiff - and his successor) either still hadn't grasped the enormity of what they were up against, or, if they had, still hadn't figured out how to counter-act it (we suspect the latter scenario).
We naturally take Bishop McMahon's recollections of his "15 minutes" at face value and that the questions His Holiness asked him (about the Asian influx in Leicester, and the youth in Nottingham but naught else) were the full extent of his papal queries. Perhaps the late Pope was just seeking to gain a greater measure of the Dominican sat before him who had presided over a diocesan Assembly of total dissent just one month earlier? Maybe he just wanted to assess his style of answers? Then again, could it have been that he was simply as confused as we now are in Liverpool about how a priest who is apparently orthodox could ever have allowed himself to be twice misquoted about where he stood on the matter of women priests and then let the confusion continue to reign publicly (for eight years, in the end), and furthermore then let himself be completely hoodwinked by the same dissenting lobby after foolishly calling for an "open conversation" congress that played right into their hands?
Again, we leave our readers to decide for themselves.
viii. A"Diocesan Assembly" not a "Diocesan Synod"
It would seem that it was neither mere semantics nor terminological happenstance that the event convoked by Bishop McMahon in Nottingham in 2001 was called a "Diocesan Assembly" and not a "Diocesan Synod". Rather, it is hard not to conclude, given the evidence of what transpired, that what was envisaged and in fact desired was very much the former not the latter. For if a "Diocesan Synod" had been conducted, according to all the proper canonical instructions, then it is unlikely that the dissent that reigned from mid-2001, and was still being aired in 2008, likely "in the spirit" (our term) of the NDA, wouldn't have been unleashed so freely as it was.
Again we have reason to consider with more than a degree of scepticism Bishop McMahon's posthumous praise, in 2005, of "The Listening Pope" – Saint John Paul II – whom he encountered in 2001 and 2003. For it is the case that three years prior to Bishop McMahon's episcopal consecration, the Holy See, in the 19th year of the Wojtylian pontificate, set forth in the clearest of terms the Instruction on Diocesan Synods (IDS) document (Congregation for Bishops, Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, 1997).
Whilst we again emphasise that we are not canonists and further that we cannot meta-examine the whole body of the IDS text to compare its unambiguous instructions against the rebelliousness that was allowed to unfold at the NDA, our untrained eyes were drawn to certain salient passages.
Firstly, from the IDS Prologue (our emphases in bold): "In recent times it is noted that expressions of diocesan communion have also adopted other forms, sometimes described as "diocesan assemblies". While such assemblies often include elements of diocesan Synods, they do, however, lack a precise canonical character.
"It is considered thus more than opportune to clarify the dispositions of canon law with regard to diocesan Synods as well as to determine and develop those procedures to be adopted in their execution. In so far as "diocesan assemblies" or other such ecclesial gatherings resemble the object and composition of diocesan Synods, and to ensure their legal effect in the government of a particular diocese, it is desirable that they should be formally situated within the canonical discipline of the Church by reference to the prescriptions of law currently in force and by this present Instruction."
It is clear, then, that the NDA was deliberately styled as an "Assembly" not a "Synod". Small wonder as to why. Further, if we say that the NDA only "included elements of diocesan Synods" and lacked "precise canonical character" that is an understatement and then some. Basically, its whole process retained those synodal aspects that weren't inhibiting to the free reign of open dissent whilst eschewing everything else that impeded its progressive process. Aside from the fact that a "Synod" would properly have needed to have been held in the bishop's cathedra (IDS: IV; §2) – and the NDA was only a three day event, in any case, hardly a logistical headache – there were other awkward aspects that were conveniently avoided by opting instead to hold an "Assembly", notably the following (IDS: IV; §3) (our emphases in bold):
Before commencing the synodal discussions, the members of the Synod make the profession of faith in accordance with the norms of Canon 833, n. 1. The Bishop will not omit to point out the significance of this act so as to foster the "sensus fidei" amongst the members of the Synod and to inspire them with love for the doctrinal and spiritual patrimony of the Church.
Truly, we could cite passage after passage of IDS to underscore the blatantly obvious: that the NDA was so styled precisely in order to sidestep the canonical restrictions that the convocation of a "Synod" proper would have presented for an "open forum" style "Assembly" that was so obviously encouraged to hold a dissent-fuelled "conversation" that dared to ask questions about fixed doctrinal matters.
Instead we'll restrict ourselves to just three.
Firstly (IDS: II; §5):
The Bishop has the right and the duty to remove from the Synod, by decree, any synodal member whose opinions are contrary to the doctrine of the Church or who reject episcopal authority. The possibility remains, however, of recourse, according to the norm of law, against such a decree.
Secondly (IDS: III; C; §2):
In providing suitable directives for consultation, the Bishop should also be aware of the danger of pressure groups - oftentimes a regrettable reality - and he should always avoid creating unjustified expectations with regard to the effective acceptance of their proposals.
Thirdly (IDS: IV; §7):
If he judges it prudent, the diocesan Bishop can suspend or dissolve the diocesan Synod [Canon 468, §1] should grave obstacles arise in continuing the Synod and make such a decision either convenient or necessary: for example, should the orientation of the Synod become irremediably contrary to the teaching of the Church or should social conditions disturb its peaceful procedure.
ix. "He that walketh with the wise shall be wise: a friend of fools shall become like to them." (Proverbs: 13:20) (Douay-Challoner Text; Catholic Press, Inc., Chicago, 1956)
So, we come to the final part of our assessment of the NDA, which we have undertaken in this anxious Church phase – i.e. being immediately prior to the imminent release of Pope Francis' Post-Synodal Exhortation, inspired by the inglorious events of the Synod on the Family over the last two autumns – precisely because we believe we have reason to be acutely wary of what we will only describe as the agitating noises about a more synodal future local Church that we have already detected around this territory.
Accordingly, we consider another two notorious NDA aspects that stood as mutually reinforcing bookends to the whole evil period that reigned between 2001/02 and late 2008 in Nottingham. We refer to His Lordship The Rt Rev. Bishop (now Emeritus) Peter Cullinane DD, who in 2002 was the Local Ordinary of the Palmerston North diocese, New Zealand, and the Dominican Sister, Dr Raymunda Jordan, who, along with Archbishop McMahon, is one of the greatest champions of the dissenting thought of one Fr Timothy Radcliffe OP.
Bishop Cullinane's involvement with the NDA in 2002, and Sr Raymunda's overt stance some six years later in 2008, underscored the reality of the united agenda of agitation that invariably sees the issues of the aforementioned "homoheresy" inextricably allied to the campaign for female ordination, both of which were of course allowed/encouraged to waft their sulphurous fumes right throughout Nottingham's "Assembly" years.
We know from the earlier cited CO report of February 2003 that the New Zealand bishop became something of a poster boy for the original publicity materials of the NDA with Romney-wool soundbites of his drifting like a long dull cloud across both print and online literature, e.g.: "If we fail to prepare for the future that we see is coming, we betray both our past and our present."
His Lordship, as CO underlined, had felt the tiresome need in October 1994, to issue a typically thinly-veiled dissenting "...ah, yes, but..." type response to Pope St John Paul II's Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis of May 1994, which sought to close the lid forever on the debate about female ordination. Some hope! As CO reported, Bishop Cullinane's peer-reviewed paper (pay-per-view) submitted to the Australasian Catholic Record (Vol 71), and aptly listed under the search-identifier "equality", which was titled "A Pastoral-Theological reflection on Pope John Paul II’s Apostolic Letter concerning Ordination to the Priesthood", included the declaration that: "Jesus did not ‘ordain’ anyone, nor did he institute ordination as we know it. Priestly ministry as we know it did not fully emerge until after the apostolic era."
Such thick wool continued from His Lordship in 2001 when he was the signatory for the Bishops of New Zealand on a "Statement on Homosexuality" which was typical of the many-parts-good but the most-essential-part-bad type of naive communication that Catholic bishops around the world released as the juggernaut heading towards marriage between people of the same-sex got into its highest gears post-millennium. Like scores of others, Bishop Cullinane was completely unable to detect that the sodomite agenda had already identified a progressive double tactic: first achieve societal approval for so-called civil unions between those of the same-sex under the guise of economic equality, which would then inevitably soften widespread attitudes towards the penultimate goal of so-called "marriage" between those of the same-sex (the ultimate goal being that of forcing the Roman Catholic Church, using some sort of hate crime legislation, to celebrate such perverse ceremonies; any Catholic who doubts that this is the end prize for the global homo-heretics needs to introduce themselves swiftly to a high-voltage cable).
Risking accusations of naivete that could be easily directed at us, the Liverpolitanus view, for what it's worth, isn't convinced that Bishop Cullinane, for all of his liberal leanings, was acting as part of the homo-stealth war back in 2000; an analysis of the major part of the aforementioned statement shows a strong amount of solid defence concerning the Church's opposition to same-sex activities. However, instead of following orthodoxy right down to the end wire, even to the consistent declaration of opposition to so-called "civil unions", the final paragraph of the statement read: "Our position comes down to this: we support legislation that protects the actual rights of people in homosexual relationships; we do not support legislation that would make their homosexual relationship the basis of their rights. In this respect, their relationship is different from marriage."
So, as the bishop described it: "...their homosexual relationship".
That's exactly the type of wool one is prone to sophistically spin whenever one starts to indulge the caveats, nuances, exceptions or any of the sentimental pretences that lace the sodomite conversation. And those bishops who are most vulnerable to falling into well-planned traps are those like Bishop Cullinane who by 2000 already had a track record of saying "ah, yes, but..." about a range of so-called difficult issues rather than just keeping the gate locked.
He reminds us of someone.
The inevitable happened of course: the New Zealand Civil Union Act was passed in 2004 (providing for rights such as immigration, next-of-kin status, social welfare, matrimonial property and other areas); then nine years later came the country's Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Act 2013.
For the record, one Bishop McMahon, of Nottingham, whilst Chair of the Catholic Education Service, plunged head-first into the same snare in 2010 when he told The Tablet (well, of course!), in the context of defending the private lives of those with same-sex attraction who seek to become head teachers of Catholic schools, that: "Civil partnerships are precisely what they say they are. They’re not gay marriages or lesbian marriages. They’re simply a legal arrangement between two people so that they can pass on property and other rights in which they were discriminated against before." (we here make a prior reference to a situation that is ongoing in the Archdiocese of Liverpool, even as we type, to which we make further pointed reference at the foot of this instalment). Unlike our verdict about Bishop Cullinane's statement in 2000 being borne of naivete, Liverpolitanus is not so convinced – and with more than good reason – that His Grace, a decade later, was equally unwitting in his declarations about the same-sex agenda (but we'll look at that next time).
No, Bishop Cullinane's progressive views were used in order to support the propaganda that peppered the publicity for the NDA for one reason and one only. That being that the "Assembly" was called in order to push the progressive boundaries as far as possible at that time. When the fruit of the NDA, the so-called "Pastoral Plan", was issued at Advent 2004, Bishop McMahon prefaced the whole painful Blairist-blur of "visions, values, aims, targets, outcomes, contexts, recommendations" and "sacrament expanding" nonsense (quote: "[we need]...to find ways of explaining/exploring the meaning of ‘sacrament’, not being confined to the seven sacraments") with the following feigned orthodoxy:
"Special thanks are due to...the members of the Follow Through Team who have produced the Pastoral Plan after listening to many diverse voices. Their work has built on the recommendations from the Assembly. Some of the opinions expressed were impractical and others were not in accordance with the teaching of the Church. Rightly, they had to be left aside. But, by and large, the recommendations showed a great willingness of priests, deacons, religious and lay people to work alongside each other in a spirit of collaboration. We should all be encouraged by this response."
Something about locking the stable door after the horse had bolted...and ran amok for almost three years!
Anyway, we can test the apparent orthodoxy of Bishop McMahon's words that opened the Nottingham Pastoral Plan (which again featured Bishop Cullinane's pronounced wool on Pg 8) by his actions four years later concerning the 2008 "Diocesan Day" (the third of its kind) which was intended to be a crowning event of the whole NDA era that dominated the first decade of the 21st century in that territory.
Held to coincide with the Final Review (which followed the Interim Review) of the NDA-Pastoral Plan, the subtext agenda of the conference was signalled by its opening prayer:
"Assembly" with a capital A, hey! But then church with a lower case c! Of course! And "Woman and Man", in that order. Natch. Adam from Eve's rib, then. And 11 lines of risible baloney.
Alongside Bishop McMahon, the other keynote speaker at the conference, which was titled "Handing on our Faith" (whose "faith", we wonder?) was the earlier mentioned Dr Raymunda Jordan OP, sans Dominican habit of course. We'll put Sr Raymunda into context. By 2002 she was already a member of the breath-takingly arrogant and infamous Joint Dialogue Group (JDG) [*] of the disreputable pro-female ordination and pro-abortion agitators formerly known as the Catholic Women's Network (btw: an interesting contemporaneous link that we just thought we'd share in passing there) which rebranded itself several years ago as Women Word Spirit, assisted by some long-standing episcopal chicanery from right here in Liverpool (which, of course, is something we keep on our radar).
(* incidentally, other JDG members at that time included: His Lordship Rt Rev. Bishop Vincent Malone, Auxiliary Bishop of Liverpool, a veteran of the pro-female ordination lobby; and His Lordship Rt Rev. Bishop Keiron Conry, the disgraced former Ordinary of Arundel and Brighton).
Alongside other notorious dissenters, a place on the ultra-feminist JDG did not come accidentally for Sr Raymunda; her stance will have been well known across highly progressive circles. Similarly, Bishop McMahon will have known exactly what type of passive aggressive noise she would make at the NDA-Pastoral Plan Final Review of 2008.
She didn't let the team down. In an address that could have been retitled "Timothy Radcliffe: an appreciation", she spoke about the end of a "seven year journey" and then hinted at a lament concerning things that the NDA didn't manage to achieve "for one reason or other" (doctrine, perchance, Sister?). But then came the dog-whistle: the reference to welcoming "the stranger" in our midst and a query as to diocesan success on that score. Sure enough, the onslaught immediately followed.
"How are we doing with that? There is much in the review about welcome efforts in parishes. The challenge of multiculturalism and the multifaith nature of the diocese is certainly a challenge. Take that with our own ‘so called lapsed Catholics’, HIV aids, gay marriages, married clergy, women priests the flotsam and jetsam of society....there are many, many challenges indeed. But where do we stand with those who fail the litmus test for being the real thing, the real Catholic? What does it actually mean to be Catholic?"
There, in a nutshell, is what the seven year journey of the NDA was really all about: agitation on all the usual issues. Airing them. Changing perceptions. The slow burn. We can only assume that six years later when, in her words, "gay marriage" was finally legalised in the UK, Sr Raymunda was in celebratory mood.
For bad measure, we also note that the text of the NDA Interim Review asserted that the diocesan yearbook would ensure that "specific interests" or "needs" would be addressed by groups such as QUEST - the homoheresy agitating lobby that was even banned from appearing in the national Catholic Directory by His Eminence George Basil Cardinal Hume OSB (requiescat in pace) who was hardly a Traditionalist!
Odd really, considering Bishop McMahon's preface to the Pastoral Plan, which referred to opinions "not in accordance with the teaching of the Church" which, in his words, "rightly...had to be left aside". That is, "left aside", apart from when it came to the compilation of the Diocesan Yearbook, one of the most important publications any diocese can ever produce.
For the record, you can read the QUEST files of that great blogsite, Protect the Pope, here.
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| The NDA's "Diocesan Plan - Interim Review" confirming that the dissenting homoheresy group QUEST would feature in the Nottingham Diocesan Yearbook |
Anyway, a short while after that third Diocesan Day, with the NDA having finally run its course, and having achieved what it wanted to (translation: as much as it could get away with in that era), Bishop McMahon finally opted to clarify in public that he had been misquoted all those years ago – before the start of the Assembly – and that he was really orthodox on the matter of women priests and had been all along. The only problem was that he left all involved with the NDA under the opposite impression for almost eight years.
Curious, though, that he would have chosen someone like Sr Raymunda OP, one of Fr Timothy Radcliffe's greatest champions, to have delivered that last significant address of the whole NDA era. Even curiouser that he would have okayed the implicit approval of the thought of Bishop Peter Cullinane in NDA materials right from the start of proceedings. Further, what are we to make of the fact that on the day of his "installation" as Archbishop of Liverpool, His Grace stood alongside the disgraced former Archbishop of Los Angeles, His Eminence Roger Cardinal Mahony, who has been a long-standing flag-waver for the usual raft of dissenting issues, chief among them the homoheresy and the ordination of women, two subjects which were always given free-reign at the annual Los Angeles Religious Education Conference, which we know that Archbishop McMahon has been a regular attendee at over the years? And what are we to understand by His Grace's overt support himself for the repulsive views of Fr Timothy Radcliffe OP, so beloved of dissenters like Sr Raymunda Jordan OP, which he sought to headline in this archdiocese just last autumn?
Well, we make of all that what we can only make of it; that we have every reason to be as wary as we are – especially given the evidence of what happened at the NDA a decade ago, and the worrying signals His Grace has already emitted in his short time so far in Liverpool. Most particularly given that we are now in this Franciscan papacy era which aches for a more Synodal local Church era (but probably "Assembly" based!), and which also operates on the typical progressive wavelength of coded words and dog whistles but of course on a global scale.
We could go on and on about the NDA much longer than we have done, trust us.
However, we suspect we've made our point.
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• A note about the timing of this post and its altered focus:
This has taken us longer to prepare than anticipated, not just due to the obvious length (although, as said, we could have written much more about the era of the Nottingham Diocesan Assembly [2002-08]; in fact we believe we have barely skimmed the surface of that scandalous period - the extent of which we naively thought we knew). Our research was necessarily directed into areas that we really hadn't foreseen. Also, we had to check, check and re-check certain facts until we were sure about what we could publish (we repeat again, though, that we are not in a race against time here, although we were always keen to publish this prior to the release of Pope Francis' post-synodal exhortation that will arrive any day now). We deeply regret that this sub-set within our bigger Series "Searching for the Archbishop..." (which we truly yearn to conclude, but we will not do so before time) has not only eaten away at Lent but has encroached well into Holy Week. We would sincerely like to have avoided this but, as the crisis in the whole Church deepens, we have also long since concluded that in this day and Catholic age there is no ideal time to publish materials like this. For the wolves howl daily. In any case, we do ruefully wonder whether Spy Wednesday might, ironically, be a somewhat highly appropriate day to publish this latest instalment. On several levels.
We also intended for this post to touch upon what we described, last time, as His Grace's "...implementation (and subsequent cessation) of Masses in his (Nottingham) diocese, celebrated by his Dominican brothers, for the pastoral care of so-called 'Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered' (LGBT) Catholics." Such, though, were the unanticipated turns that we had to take in formulating this lengthy instalment that we have now had to delay addressing that distressing subject (circa 2006) until our next post (n.b. nothing we have published above we deem to be extraneous to the broader issues that we are addressing in our ongoing Series, however much that might seem so at first glance; as future posts will bear out). However, at this point, we do wish to say the following about the endlessly agitating dissent towards the Church's teaching on same-sex activities - and His Grace's very mixed record on that score, which we briefly consider in our post above:
As we have highlighted at the very top of this post, we are, of course, aware of the current scandal unfolding right now in the Archdiocese of Liverpool – which is the subject of the Citizen Go petition that we linked to right at the top, also in the middle of our post, and willingly do so again for a third time here. As said, it concerns a primary school in this territory where the very youngest children are being corrupted by the evil perversions of the same-sex agenda (aka the homoheresy). Thankfully, and they have our admiration and support as always, the courageous team at Torch of the Faith (TOTF) have led the defence for orthodoxy on this matter thus far. Naturally we are also watching on with interest. Whilst it is shocking, it is not at all surprising that the TOTF team have so far found themselves, yet again, as a lone voice of defence against this filth that first reared-up, locally, almost two weeks ago. As TOTF stated earlier in this Holy Week: "[after all this time]...the public response of the Archbishop, bishops, priests, deacons and laity of the Archdiocese to this very public transgression of natural law, divine law, canon law, and the various post-Conciliar documents, which govern Catholic education and affirm the rights and duties of parents, has been absolutely zero... zilch... nada... nothing!"
The four excellent TOTF posts on this grave matter can be found here, here, here, and here. We would encourage anyone passing this way to not only read them all, but also sign the Citizen Go petition (link again here) to His Grace which appeals to him to defend Catholic Truth and stem the perversities that our local schoolchildren are being subject to on his pastoral watch. Also, if anyone – wherever they are stationed around the Catholic world – has the ability or the means to communicate greater awareness of this ongoing scandal (e.g. bloggers, or those with regular e-mail circulars etc.) then please do so.
In the words of the TOFT team: "Mark this well: We have reached a decisive moment in the history of the Archdiocese of Liverpool."
We couldn't agree more.
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If you haven't already read our substantial post – which we again present somewhat in our preferred style of an "information portal" that can be returned to again and again – then please do so. You will see that the same-sex dissent unfolding now in the Archdiocese of Liverpool has been a long time coming in England and Wales.
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Sacred Triduum and immediate Eastertide period recess.
