I am not blind to the difficulties facing popes, patriarchs and bishops during the Plague Crisis. They creditably feel that they have a civic, a communal duty to care for the temporal good of the countries in which they are domiciled. And, to a degree, they are right. What would have been gained if the public had got the impression that the Plague became worse than it needed to be because of the Papists? For long centuries, the 'Monument' in London bore an inscription reminding passers by that the Great Fire of London was started by Catholics! (It wasn't.)
But ...
There does have to be a But. Facilities deemed 'essential' remained open in our towns. It is a telling illustration of the marginalisation of the Faith of Jesus in this land that the Presence of the Tabernacled Lord, that the offering of the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, were dismissed as being of no more importance than public games of football.
And that bishops accepted this implicit adjustment of priorities.
Mind you, one English bishop did become rather uneasy about locking all his churches up. And he has wondered why non-Christian places of worship appeared to feel these pressures perhaps rather less strongly than the CBCEW did.
We can all think "what should have been done". In Poland, the idea was raised of having so many Masses that congregations could be socially spaced in Church ... or in the open spaces where Mass happened. Every priest could have been given faculties to say five Masses a day and ten on Sundays! Yes ... ideas could cheerfully abound ...
Part of what I want to say is that pastors should not have panicked. But even more important than that ...
Pastors should responsibly discuss some of the key issues involved, real issues in secular Britain, such as the pressures put on Churches by the State. And, after all, it will not quite wash to say that "Nobody could know that Coronavirus was coming". A decade ago, Avian 'flu' appeared to be a lethal menace, and detailed planning took place. The fact that Avian 'flu' never took off does not change the fact that many people have felt that a major pandemic was a distinct and continuing probability.
PF is now planning his next preoccupying ego-trip, which will double up as another episode in his plan radically to damage the Catholic Church. A Synod on, er, Synodality. You couldn't make it up, could you?
So here he is, preparing to fly off yet again to Kai Lung's Garden of Bright Images; to the Land of the Giants whom Don Quixote (should have gone to Specsavers) so valiantly attacked.
A Synod on Synodality? Pray God that the next Pope is an Italian who likes the idea of staying at home, and looks speculatively at those feathered fans and the gestatorial chair. Oh, and with a particular devotion to St Pius X.
ReplyDeleteDear Father. ABS is no genius but he at least had the initiative to search out some facts on his own. When the planned panic began (ABS does think it is not disconnected from the continuing coup against Trump) He checked the Morbidity and Mortality reports of the CDC and discovered that the stats from the previous six or seven years disclosed more deaths in the previous flu seasons than this year.
ReplyDeleteIt took about ten minutes to discover this. Where were the Bishops (who are always publicly praising religious liberty) and why were they not doing something similar? Why did they not discover that Doctor Brix has no current medical license but is on TV every ten seconds practicing medicine by harping away at free men and women.
Tiny Tony Fauci (PBUH) relied on the model developed by the scientist from Great Britain who was wildly wrong in his predictions of deaths resulting from mad cow disease and which failure of his tends to support the idea that in the west nothing succeeds like failure.
Besides - it wasn't the government who ordered our churches closed. They banned religious services, yes, but granted permission for churches to remain open for private prayer. This permission was declined.
ReplyDeleteScribe - The Young Pope has Jude Law playing Pius XIII who sits on gestatorial chair, wears tiara and makes cardinals kiss his feet.
ReplyDeleteI understand it was not so much that the permission was declined but that the Bishop's conference on the advice of a doctor thought the permission was wrong and persuaded the Government to withdraw it. Any countervailing reason for keeping the Church's open so that the faithful could visit the Blessed Sacrament did not occur to the Bishops Con. Par for the course. This will not be lost on the laity.
ReplyDeleteDear Father. ABS should have included the link that caused him to write about the "scientist from Great Britain"
ReplyDeletehttps://wmbriggs.com/post/30383/
It was he and his associates which led to this political panic, or, encouraged them to see just how much more control over free men that could achieve without opposition