14 January 2020

Diaconia, briefly, again. And Married Priests. And Clerical Sex Abuse.

Dr David Lopez has kindly sent me a copy of an article on Diaconia which he published in 2014 (Antiphon 19.1, pp 51-78. He is very much on target, and I commend his piece to those who want to take the matter further.

2020 UPDATE

The new book by Cardinal Sarah and Benedict XVI, on married priests, is inevitably stimulating comments on what it is the liberals are going for. As I said the other day, securing women deacons is just a step to the Real Prize. We ex-Anglicans have witnessed the whole shoddy corrupt process by which these people seek their ends.

Tonight there was the first part of a BBCTV programme ... second part tomorrow, Tuesday ... on the Anglican Bishop Peter Ball, whose career of abuse was of industrial proportions. I mention this because, yet again, one currently hears the silly claim that having married priests would solve the abuser-priest (and abuser-Cardinal) problem. It most emphatically would not. The English Independent Inquiry into clerical sex abuse demonstrated this in its case-study of the Anglican  Diocese of Chichester.


Ball preached a sermon in Lancing College Chapel telling the students that, if their bishop told them to take their clothes off, they needed to obey. He had become so relaxed and confident in his abuse that he brazenly thought he could get away with anything.

Rather McCarrick!!

And the C of E hasn't encouraged celibacy since 1559.

6 comments:

JamesF-J said...

I don't suppose the article is available online anywhere Father? Or would Dr Lopez be willing/able to provide a link or pdf? I have circulated links to your previous posts on diakonia to my fellow candidates & aspirants to the Permanent Diaconate at Oscott, and they generated some interest. I think this article would also be of interest to them. I will see if Oscott library carries Antiphon next time I am there

Deacon David said...

Antiphon is now (as of Spring 2017) being published by Catholic University of America Press. PDF articles from Volume 19 and 20 are currently available at Project Muse. Here is a link:
https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/35179
Blessings!

JamesF-J said...

Deacon David thanks for the link I will check it out

Fr Simon Heans said...

Fr Ashley Beck, who is academic director of the diaconal training course for the southern dioceses, delivered a paper at the Catholic Theological Association's 2018 conference (available in New Blackfriars March 2019) in which he accepts the case against the deacon as servant made by Collins. However, he is in no frame of mind to abandon it. He writes that "being aware of errors in interpretation does not necessarily lead us in the direction of abandoning a 'myth'." He cites Professor David Brown's work on Mary Magadalen as his authority for this quixotic position and concludes with the claim that "tradition develops as part of the the Church in the way that we accept that doctrine and teaching develop." So tradition is whatever we say it is, which is of course a million miles from what Newman taught about development! Fr Simon Heans

Nicolas Bellord said...

The two programs on Bishop Peter Ball were very useful in showing just how a predator manages to persuade a seminarian to join in awful acts - something that has puzzled me in the past. Peter Ball's technique was apparently to say that Christ died the shameful death of a common criminal. Thus in order to unite oneself with the sufferings of Christ one should engage in something really shameful such as .... The destruction of young men who had vocations was truly appalling.

There are obvious parallels with the McCarrick case and it would be useful to have a similar account in due course - however I suspect the detailed truth will be buried.

PseudonymousposterJohn said...

Friends on the staff of another good, solid anglican boarding school on the Sussex borders informed me that Peter Ball preached to the boys on the subject of how He liked to rise and throw off all his clothes and pray naked in the mornings. This may have been some years before his speech at Lancing.
He also 'counselled' a friend at Chichester.
I worked out the other day that three people I knew had dealings with him and I never lived in Sussex or Glos. - indeed, we assume that appointment demonstrated he really did have friends in some very high places, or at least the Cotswolds.
He got everywhere.

But, you know, the wicked papists and all...