The
German Option: Will the English Bishops follow their German
counterparts into Schism?
What
is the German Option? Sandro Magister in L'Espresso has
explained how a synod is developing in Germany:
Here
are a few excerpts:
“The
synod held its first session in Frankfurt from January 30 to February
1. And the inaugural Mass, officiated by Munich cardinal Reinhard
Marx, provided the portrait of it, with bishops, priests, and lay
people [who form the majority]...
… even
among the bishops the dissenters can be counted on the fingers of one
hand. Left to contest the dreaded slide toward a Protestant model of
Church are Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, archbishop of Cologne, and
the bishops Rudolf Voderholzer of Regensburg, Stefan Oster of Passau,
Gregor Maria Hanke of Eichstätt, and Wolfgang Ipolt of Görlitz”
POWER
“Gender
equality must be achieved at all levels. For access to pastoral
services, even to the diaconal, presbyteral, and episcopal ministry,
it cannot be excluded.”
"The
institutional order linked to a hierarchy as ‘sacred power’ is
due not so much to a Catholic necessity as to an anti-modern mental
prejudice.”
“In
this context, access to the ordained ministry must also be clarified.
On the synodal journey we must openly discuss married priests and the
access of women to these ministries, including the ordained
ministry.”
WOMEN
“The
evident discrepancy between the position of the magisterial documents
and the unanimous argument of theological scholarship on the question
of the female call to the ministerial apostolate is a ‘skandalon’
that must be overcome for the sake of the credibility of the
proclamation of the Paschal Gospel.”
“In
theological research we do not agree on how binding is the
affirmation in the apostolic letter ‘Ordinatio sacerdotalis’ of
Pope John Paul II, acccording to which the exclusion of women from
the sacramental ministry must be ‘definitive tenendam,’ or a
decision ‘to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.’
SEX
“Turning
one’s attention to what happens between those who love each other
today ... can even mean scenting the work of the Spirit and the
action of God in unusual places.”
“The
normative postulates of current Catholic sexual morality contradict
the knowledge of the human sciences on the multiple dimensions of
meaning of human sexuality.”
...
Furthermore, the Church's ban on socially and legally recognizing
homosexual couples is judged as discrimination based on sexual
orientation.”
… In
the individual declarations of the magisterium regarding pre-marital
and extra-marital sexuality, as well as autoeroticism, the negative
evaluation of sexual pleasure continues to dominate. […] The first
helpful guidelines are found in ‘Amoris laetitia’ [by Pope
Francis].”
“Family
planning, even with the help of artificial means of regulating
conception, does not represent an act hostile to life, but supports
the right of a couple to decide responsibly on the number of
children, on the spacing of births, and on the concrete means of
family planning.”
“Homosexual
acts also realize positive values of meaning if they are an
expression of friendship, reliability, loyalty, and life support.”
“It
is necessary to recognize homosexual life unions without reservation
and to give up morally discrediting their sexual practice.”
Basically
the German Church is looking to rubbish the Church's teaching on the
role of women and sexual matters. They may claim that they will
submit the most important decisions on doctrine to Rome but is there
any doubt that regardless of what Rome says they will go ahead with
these 'reforms' as Luther did with his 'reforms'? That is the German
Option.
WILL
THE ENGLISH BISHOPS FOLLOW THE SAME PATH?
They
will not have a Synod on the German model; instead they may reach the
same destination by osmosis without consulting the laity in any
meaningful sense. Gradually proponents of these same proposals will
become more numerous in positions of power so that these new ideas
become the norm. Anyone not accepting them will be ignored and
sidelined as being out of touch with the modern world. In fact this
has been gradually happening over many years but has accelerated in
the last twenty years with the arrival of Cormac Cardinal
Murphy-O'Connor at the start of the new millennium. But now it has
reached a critical point with the controversy surrounding the closing
of Churches during the pandemic and the employment of the LGBT
activist Jim McManus by the Bishops' Conference to influence the
Government towards closing the Churches. The use of Jim McManus in
this role has come under a very strong attack by LifeSiteNews:
This
attack on the role McManus is so forceful as to make one wonder
whether it is credible. However at the Conference's own website at:
there
is a picture of McManus. His connection to the Hertfordshire County
Council is clearly shown by the items appearing on the right of the
picture. Taken together with the video of him promoting LGBT at a
Hertfordshire CC event last year that is sufficient prima facie
evidence of his being a leading advocate of the LGBT agenda.
McManus
is not shy about his many achievements and roles as he sets them out
in his blog at:
He
has certainly managed to embed himself in the Catholic Church:
A
member of the Theology,
Religion and Practice Research Group at
Roehampton University, and Vice-Chair of the Healthcare Executive
Group of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales,
authoring the 2008 and
2018 national chaplaincy guidelines for the NHS and the Catholic
Church, a
Trustee of St Joseph’s Hospice, Hackney, awarded the Good
Samaritan Medal for Excellence in Healthcare by Pope Benedict XVI,
the highest honour for healthcare the Vatican can award, a Companion
of the Order of Malta, Chair
of the Board of Governors
of
the Catholic Anscombe Bioethics Centre in Oxford, Knight
and then a Grand Knight of the Knights of St. Columba sodality in
Birmingham between November 2008 and July 2012, a
Trustee of the Diocese of Birmingham from 2009 to 2014.
Truly
a very active man. However throughout his career he has been an
advocate of LGBT rights and evidently believes there is no problem
with their lifestyle.
Perhaps
what is interesting is that since the publication of the LifeSiteNews
article on 13th
May 2020 there has been no reaction from anyone in the Catholic world
apart from a passing twitter from Damian Thompson. Blinded by his
CV? Fear of legal proceedings or just so aghast as to freeze? There
is total silence.
This
is surely the moment to determine the future direction of the
Bishops' conference.
The
story has come to a head over the closing of Churches during the
Covid-19 pandemic. Apparently the Government were not minded to
close Churches other than to ban religious services but McManus
acting for the Bishops' conference persuaded them to close the doors
of the Churches. This was utterly deplorable. I knew nothing of
McManus but I saw this as the culmination of an appalling record in
the Catholic Church in England going back many decades.
THE
HISTORICAL RECORD
When
I was in practice as a Solicitor from the 1960s onwards all that
seemed to be happening was the collapse of the Church. I dealt with
nuns leaving their convents in droves and the inevitable closure of
convents that followed. Then we had the abuse scandals which made
being a Catholic an embarrassment. Church attendance was in
free-fall, many beautiful churches were uglified in a program of
re-ordering and Catholic institutions either disappeared or became
increasingly laicised and secularised. Clergy seemed preoccupied
with worldly matters and inevitably became political. Vocations fell
off a cliff and now we can anticipate our monasteries disappearing –
by their fruits you will know them. Modern catechetics lost its way
and much of the fault for that must be laid at the foot of the
Catholic Education Service which is an arm of the Bishops'
Conference.
A
particular problem with which I was concerned was the secularisation
of the Hospital of St John & St Elizabeth. First of all there
was an attempt by secular elements to purloin the Hospital. I
brought this to the attention of Cardinal Hume who was very angry
over this issue. Unfortunately he ended up dead at the Hospital
after his cancer was diagnosed as merely depression. His plan to
create a centre of Catholic Medical Excellence was buried by the
apparatchiks at the Bishops' Conference.
In
the first decade of the present century a number of eminent lay
Catholics – philosophers, ethicists and others presented a petition
to Cardinal Cormac, to ban Gender Reassignment Operations (GROs)–
mainly female to male – which were taking place at the Hospital
contrary to their code of ethics but earning them much money. Cormac
instead of dealing with this passed the buck to Rome. Fortunately
the then Cardinal Ratzinger told Cormac to set up an inquiry which
duly reported and recommended a much stronger code of ethics.
However despite rumours of abortions taking place and a disregard for
Humanae Vitae
Cardinal Cormac gave in to secular minded doctors and allowed the new
code to be eviscerated. One particular point that struck me was that
the newly eviscerated code, blessed by Cardinal Cormac removed the
ban on FGMs – Female Genital Mutilation. One can now see such a
ban might have interfered with the lucrative Gender Reassignment
Operations. Cormac triumphed in the end when the Catholic Board of
the Hospital who had wrested control from the secularists were
unceremoniously asked to resign in favour of Cormac's more compliant
appointees.
At
the time I pleaded with the Bishops' conference to do something but
they refused saying that there was nothing wrong with GRO's if the
patient felt better afterwards. It was plain to me that Cormac
rejected the Church's teaching on sexuality and the Bishops'
Conference followed his lead. Cormac's disastrous handling of the
case of the paedophile Father Hill has to be seen in that light. We
then had the scandal of the Soho Masses which seemed to be under the
control of an active gay man who ran a
blog:https://queeringthechurch.wordpress.com/
proposing a 'reality-based theology'. Lay Catholics protested about
this but Cormac's successor Cardinal Vincent Nichols told them “Hold
your Tongues”. Cardinal Nichols emerged from a low week meeting of
the Bishops' Conference to say he was in favour of Civil Unions for
homosexual couples. A position taken up by a representative of
Catholic Voices at one point.
Over
the years the Catholic Education Service, an arm of the Bishops'
Conference, has been complicit in agreeing to the Government's plans
for sex education. In 2010 in correspondence they misrepresented
what the Government were laying down by quoting what the Minister had
said in Parliament but carefully cutting out statements that should
have been unacceptable to the Catholic Church. More recently the
Government is implementing an unacceptable sex education programme in
the Autumn and once more the Catholic Education Service has accepted
it. There
is an authoritative article by Dr Tom Rogers entitled "How
Catholic Church Officials have betrayed Parents and Children" in
the Spring 2019 edition of 'Calx Mariae'.
THE
McMANUS AFFAIR – A CRITICAL TURNING-POINT?
I
see it as such but it is a matter of scandal which has not been
resolved one way of another. The official line as communicated to me
is that:
a.
The Bishops Conference did not persuade the Government to close the
Churches but that Churches have been closed in response to the
requirements of the Government.
"'Professor
Jim McManus has spoken with a senior civil servant and it was quite
clear they just had not thought through the issues of infection and
security of churches and when he made these points clear, they were
appalled and agreed they had made a mistake."
That
surely requires further explanation.
b.
McManus is not an employee of the Bishops' Conference.
If
you mean by employed that someone is a paid employee of the
Conference then that is probably correct. However in ordinary
parlance to employ someone has a much wider meaning. For example
somebody might say that they have employed a Solicitor to fight their
case in court. Of course this does not mean that the Solicitor is a
paid employee but merely that he is in a professional relationship
where he is self-employed acting on behalf of a client. McManus
appears on the Conference website advising about Coronavirus on
behalf of the Conference and the above quote shows him acting as an
agent for the Conference. Can the Conference really dispute that?
The
Conference and the hierarchy cannot comment as the matter is the
subject of legal processes.
It
is claimed that the matter is 'sub judice' and therefore any public
discussion would be a contempt of court. Did they bother to take
legal advice on this point? The Contempt of Court Act 1981 makes it
clear that in respect of civil proceedings the rule only applies
when the case has been set down for trial on a fixed date. As far
as has been reported no writ has been issued and the process of
setting down for trial only follows weeks or months after the issue
of a writ. It is therefore nonsense to say that the matter is 'sub
judice' and one can only assume that this is a pathetic attempt to
refuse to respond to the concerns of the laity and a desire to
cover-up the truth.
Of
course the nub of this matter is not really about the closure of
churches but how it is that a man who promotes the LGBT cause and/or
promotes abortion, if that is the case, has been allowed to penetrate
the Church in England and Wales and to have such a high profile in
the Bishops' Conference and more distressingly become Chairman of
Governors of the Anscombe Bioethical Centre – an organisation that
is supposedly in the front line of supporting Catholic condemnation
of homosexual acts and abortion. Although their website has suddenly
said he is 'on leave of absence' – no doubt a euphemism.
An
explanation is demanded but so far it is not forthcoming.
The
question then arises as to whether the Bishops' Conference is heading
down a path similar to that of the German Bishops. There are of
course some Bishops who are very strong in opposing abortion and some
have murmured about the closure of Churches but it is only a murmur.
Are they strong enough to bring the Conference back on course?
There is no cause for optimism that they are.
Is
the Conference so infiltrated by the homosexual lobby and a disregard
for sexual morality that they will take up the German
Option?
If they do I doubt whether it will be done openly or as a result of
consultation with laity. It will just gradually happen. Sin will
be normalised.
Any
Bishop reading this should note that Sandro Magister's first heading
is POWER.
The GERMAN
OPTION involves
handing over power to the laity. Perhaps this something which some
Bishops would be only too happy to accept. It would save them a lot
of bother if they just become figureheads.
The
final question is what should be the response of the faithful laity
to such a move to the GERMAN
OPTION. Some
have suggested that withholding money from the clergy is one answer
i.e. stop putting money in the plate. I doubt if this will work. If
the Church gradually becomes indistinguishable from the worldly
zeitgeist the Churches will empty – why bother? - the
hierarchy can then sell off redundant churches and live on the
proceeds.
Will
faithful Bishops, Priests or Religious stop this? Unfortunately most
will do nothing out of false loyalty and false obedience. It is
going to be up to the Laity to get the barque of the Church back on
an even keel. So far I have not seen overmuch happening amongst the
laity but let us hope matters will change.
Maybe
there will be a rising up from an unexpected quarter. Some have
suggested that what we are seeing is a Marxist culture war to destroy
Christian civilisation by revolution and the destruction of morality
and in particular the family. Originally the theory was that the
proletariat would rise up and bring about the revolution. However
the proletariat have been a disappointment to Marxists. They have
therefore given up on the proletariat and have instead turned to
certain minorities – extreme feminists, ethnic minorities, those
with homosexual tendencies, those with gender dysphoria etc. to
replace the proletariat and to foment a revolution. However it may
be that it will be just these groups, who like the proletariat, will
disappoint the Marxists. It is noticeable for instance that the
ethnic minorities in the Church seem to be the most traditional and
they must be asking themselves whether those who cry 'Black Lives
Matter' means “Only some Black Lives Matter” when it comes to
the unborn. Are there not many with homosexual tendencies who do not
want to be promoting queerdom? Many feminists are at war with the
transgender movement. And are there not many ordinary people with no
particular religious affiliation who are protesting at the filth that
is being fed to their children as 'sex education'?
We
live in interesting times.
Nicolas J. Bellord 12th June 2020
UPDATE 13th June 2020
Churches
are to be allowed to be re-opened for private prayers as from Monday
15th June. The Catholic Church has issued guidance to its
priests dated 1st June on 3rd June:
The Church
of England followed suit on 3rd June:
There is a
great contrast. Whilst the Church of England writes:
Should
someone be present all the time to monitor the church?
There
is no public health need to do this, though the decision will need to
be based on your own local situation and risk assessment.
Catholic
priests are told:
At
least two stewards must be present in the church throughout the time
it is open for prayer; the stewards must ensure that hand
sanitisation occurs at entry and exit points, social distancing is
maintained by people in the church and if a pre-determined capacity
is reached, they prevent others from entering the church. (Through,
for example, a “one in, one out” policy.) People with cold or
flu-like symptoms should be asked not to enter.
And
that is just the start as to what these stewards have to do.
But
why the difference? Are not Catholic priests being asked to do far
more than the Government actually requires?
Physical
veneration of relics or objects such as statues, crucifixes and
shrines is not permitted.
So
presumably genuflecting in front of a crucifix is now forbidden;
although for years such quaint customs have been discouraged by our
more progressive clergy.
As
for confession, which could easily be made available, there is no
mention.
All
in all the Church of England's document is encouraging the opening of
their churches with as few restrictions as possible whilst the
Catholic Church seems to be imposing such detailed and burdensome
requirements on Parish Priests that it is difficult to see how more
than a few will be able to open their churches.
It
has been suggested that the hand of McManus is all over this
document. If so, just what is happening?
I
would imagine that Satan would see the current deprivation of the
laity of sacramental grace as truly a great victory. Has he not got
some useful disciples, knowingly or unknowingly, implementing his
wishes?
FURTHER UPDATE 23RD July 2020
Mr McManus has resigned as Chairman of Governors of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre with the encouragement of his fellow governors.
No news from the Bishops. Their new regulations about Masses have resulted in Mass being available. My parish has announced public masses as follows:
Tuesday 14th July 9.30.a.m.
Friday 17th July 9.30.a.m.
Tuesday 21st July 9.30.a.m.
Friday 24th July 9.30.a.m.
Tuesday 28th July 9.30.a.m.
Friday 31st July 9.30.a.m.
But NEVER on Sundays which seems to be the rule at adjoining parishes
