![Image (cropped) from the Mass on May 1st, 2014, at the Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, to celebrate the "installation" of His Grace The Most Rev. Malcolm McMahon as the ninth Archbishop of Liverpool. Taken from the Flickr album created and publicly shared by © Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk under the stated free-to-use and adapt attribution of the Creative Commons Non-commercial Share Alike Generic 2.0 policy [CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqnNITssKA1hUWkoQm8TUa3KTcmqkiFDUHqqZLJUhiNLgVyMG7YWrtPDY7pbm47g7TBXZWi2Opq-gkTu634HG7BMI7RPWw2G4ED2dw2EkFIqel4QdG-h91VXoXsbnA6ZEcDw3yMU1B5eY/s1600/ArchbishopBrochure+%25281%2529.jpg "Image (cropped) from the Mass on May 1st, 2014, at the Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, to celebrate the \"installation\" of His Grace The Most Rev. Malcolm McMahon as the ninth Archbishop of Liverpool. Taken from the Flickr album created and publicly shared by © Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk under the stated free-to-use and adapt attribution of the Creative Commons Non-commercial Share Alike Generic 2.0 policy [CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0]")
Advice: this post takes roughly 30 minutes to read (i.e. on a flat basis, which we initially recommend, without following the accompanying and specifically titled "Key Links", of which there are 23, all of which are clearly marked and numbered, presented in as coherent an order as possible, can be returned to later but most certainly should be perused). The whole piece has been structured as something of an information portal, and presented as courteously as we could manage for the reader in order to enable him to return to it easily and at leisure.
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1. BACKGROUND
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1. BACKGROUND
The 134th Roscoe Lecture (series founded by Baron Alton of Liverpool KCSG, KCMCO; hosted under the auspices of Liverpool John Moores University) was delivered by His Grace The Most Rev. Malcolm McMahon OP, ninth Archbishop of Liverpool, at the Brittania Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool, on October 28th, 2015.
Our ears noted two potentially disturbing, at the very least ambiguous, snippets uttered by the Archbishop during the Question and Answer session that followed his, otherwise well-recommended, if more than a bit "Seventies Lefty", and certainly endearingly gentle talk: The Common Good (and Catholic Social Thought).
We immediately provide for your consideration the verbatim and salient extracts from each instance (but fuller, more contextualised versions will appear later):
EXCERPT 1:
(A female audience member, commenting to His Grace on the shortage of Catholic priests):
"...what about your, I know this is very difficult, what about the idea of broadening your recruitment to women?”
[laughter, general hearty audience applause]
(His Grace):
“Uh, what about it? Yup."
[even more - and this time clearly knowing - laughter]
EXCERPT 2:
(His Grace, responding earlier to another female audience member who touched-on issues of tolerance, compassion and Catholic dogma):
"...dogma's tricky because it's there on a page. It doesn't mean much while it just stays as words on a page. Doctrine is always something that you have to live out as a person..."
We'll revisit those nuggets later.
