25 August 2020

Titular Sees ... and S Teresa of Calcutta ... and episcopal werewolves

Foul weather here in Blighty today. The Weather Community tells us that there will be calamity, disaster, disorder. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, if not their five Aunties. For some reason, they have given the storm the title "Francis". (I bet Mr Ivereigh is hopping mad. He probably blames it on the malign influence of Converts.)

However, I will do what comes so easily to us poor old gentlemen: I shall hunker down, stay at home,  and meditate on how everything has deteriorated since yesteryear.

In yesteryear, when everything was so perfect, when I was a bonny baby being pushed around in my perambulator ... I just loved those glorious Episcopal Sees in partibus infidelium. What a joy to know that, in Tudor Exeter, there was William, Bishop of Hippo in partibus. How his Confirmation candidates must have hung upon his every word! How Henry Tudor must have feared his fulminations on the subject of the Civitas Dei!

I gurgled with glee.

Now that the Roman See has put a stopper to these titular delights, it is often hard to know whether some prelate is Anglican or Catholic. Take, for example, the Bishop of Much Wenlock. He is quite a source of bons mots. (Here's a choice example: "Facts are only steam which obscures the mirror of truth": reliably recorded by a Protonotary Apostolic, R A Knox).

Time was, when one could be fairly confident that such a gentleman would be an Anglican Suffragan Bishop (probably a close friend of the Bishop of Buckingham).

But now ... after seven decades of ecumenical rapprochement ... how can we be sure that he is not the latest member of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales? Perhaps, yet another Westminster auxiliary? Destined for Birmingham when Bernard gets Westminster?

Changing the subject to my next grumble: there are silly people on the internet complaining about somebody or other who has done a very sensible comparison of PF with S Pius X (possibly inspired by the rumours about the imminent encyclical Stuprandi Dominici Gregis)..

Oh dear. Does nobody nowadays ever read Plutarch? You'd better watch my Blog with trepidation, because I am preparing a major and definitive comparison of Pol Pot and Mother Teresa.

And finally ... there is a picture on the internet of Archbishop Hesse of Hamburg (didn't Hitler have a chum with this name?), whose mind (he desires us to know) is not closed to the possibility of wyminpriests. A man of the Future? More, I suggest, a man of the past. His chasuble is embroidered with the sort of cross that German military uniforms often bore during the Third Reich.

I bet he's a werewolf.

It's still raining.


10 comments:

Scribe said...

Dear Father, There are a couple of things in favour of Archbishop Hesse. First, he is very fond of classical and organ music. Second, when asked by a reporter the obligatory question about what football team he supports, he didn't pretend to do so, as most of our English prelates do. His reply was: 'It would be the worst thing to pretend. That muse has not kissed me.' Chaplain to His Holiness 2005. Prelate of Honour, 2010.

Once I Was A Clever Boy said...

Dear Fr, I can see you starting a whole new literary genre with “I was a Nazi Episcopal Werewolf” and it’s sequels - “ Full Moon Confirmation”, “ Howling in the Sanctuary”, “Synod of Blood” etc....

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

Dear Father. If you really want to have some fun cite Saint Augustine teaching that God places such men as Hitler to rule over others.

O, and we know from the Prayers in the old Roman Missals of The Holy Holocaust that God also chooses Popes.

Some days it is just too stormy outside to go and whack a hornet's nest and so one must do what one can.

motuproprio said...

The current auxiliaries in Westminster are the bishops of Hilta, St German’s (also an Anglican version) and Mercia.

PM said...

The present Secretary for Relations with States (i.e. Vatican foreign minister), Mgr Gallagher originally of the archdiocese of Liverpool, is titular archbishop of Hodelm. Am I correct in thinking that his see was invented when he was first consecrated to serve as an apostolic delegate?

motuproprio said...

Hodelm (Dumfriesshire) was invented or revived in 1974 for Daniel Edward Pilarczyk as Auxiliary Bishop of Cincinnati

The Archlaic said...

Hilta? Talk about “Monty Python bishops”!

Percy said...

The best titular see is GarĂ°ar (Greenland), the first see established in the New World, by Pope Pascal II in 1124, centuries before Columbus visited and any see was established in the Antilles. Currently held since 2001 by Aux. Bp Edward Clark of Los Angeles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gar%C3%B0ar,_Greenland

The Flying Dutchman said...

The Archbishop’s only possible defence is that he might be some sort of prelate of the Teutonic Order.

motuproprio said...

Hilta was an ancient city and former bishopric in Roman Africa, in the north of modern Tunisia.Definitely in partibus infidelium.