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__NEWS__England_________________________
Rude Awakening
A summer of crisis ends with a cardinal’s blunt call for change
in the approach taken by the British hierarchy.
By Bess Twiston-Davies
“England is a club that we can’t break into,” remarked a Vatican official during a recent visit to the country. His comments reflect a concern that has become widespread in Rome. The Vatican is aware that the English Church is in crisis, but seemingly at a loss to know how to break the liberal grip on the nation’s episcopal conference.
Over the past twenty years, the Church in England and Wales has become more English, but less universal. It still bears the stamp of the late Cardinal Basil Hume, who sought to anglicize the Church and keep Rome out. As he intended, this strategy allayed the traditional Protestant suspicions of “Papists” that date back to the Protestant Reformation. His achievement is often praised, but few commentators have noted the result: a group of bishops apparently more at ease with the English establishment than the Vatican.
Under the guiding light of Cardinal Hume, members of the English hierarchy perfected the art of making soothing noises on their ad limina visits to Rome, but overlooking the complaints of orthodox lay Catholics who were dissatisfied with the Church at home.
The Vatican had indicated its disquiet with the English bishops’ conference earlier this year, through some unusual episcopal appointments. They included the selection of two members of religious orders (Bishop Thomas McMahon of Nottingham, a Dominican, and Bishop Mark Jabale of Menevia, a Benedictine), instead of members of the secular clergy; and most surprising of all, an auxiliary bishop from London (the Archdiocese of Westminster) was suddenly switched to the see of Lancaster. These appointments followed no discernible pattern, except that they hinted the Roman Curia might be looking for new blood in the English episcopate, and therefore drawing from sources other than those recommended by the existing hierarchy.
Missteps and misstatements
This summer, however, marked a sea change in the fortunes of England’s Catholic community, after a pair of unsought reports in the secular press highlighted the problems in the English episcopal conference. Like so many disasters, this trend began with a small miscalculation, which ballooned into a major problem when clerics tried to camouflage the problem.
It all began when the Roman Catholic Lesbian and Gay Caucus, the Catholic offshoot of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, announced that their monthly Mass would be revived in early June. The event, according to a statement, was going ahead with “the full knowledge” of Bishop Patrick O’Donoghue, who at the time had administrative responsibilities for West London. Martin Pendergast, the organizer of the homosexual group, said: “We have been very open with Bishop O’Donoghue.”
But then the bishop in question professed no knowledge about the plans for the Mass. Pendergast changed his stance, saying now that he could not recall whether the bishop had been informed; he explained that he had just returned from his vacation. It eventually emerged that the Roman Catholic Lesbian and Gay Caucus had written to Bishop O’Donoghue about the plans for the Mass—but that the letter had been sent two years earlier.
Victoria Combe, religion correspondent of London’s Daily Telegraph, called on a gay Catholic source to follow up this story which had appeared in the Catholic press. Her source misunderstood her questions; he assumed that she must have been asking about a different Mass organized by homosexual Catholics in London. So a provocative new story emerged.
This second Mass was a special celebration for Pendergast, an ex-Carmelite, and his homosexual partner Julian Filochowski, the director of CAFOD: the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, which is Britain’s leading Catholic charity and is formally attached to the bishops’ conference. This celebration—separate and distinct from the Mass organized by the gay caucus—was to be celebrated by Bishop John Crowley of Middlesbrough, the former chairman of CAFOD. The event was to take place at Heythrop College, a Jesuit institute of higher education in central London. The invitations characterized the Mass as a celebration of “25 years of friendship and commitment to justice.”
However, Bishop Crowley abruptly pulled out of the event on the morning of June 10, after the Daily Telegraph ran a story about the Mass. He explained that he had decided not to be the celebrant because of “misleading” press reports, and added: “I want to make it perfectly clear at the outset that what is being celebrated at this Mass is, as the invitation card indicated, ‘25 years of friendship and commitment to justice.’ It is simply that.”
Bishop Crowley added that any suggestion the celebration sought to challenge Catholic teaching on marriage and sexuality was “totally without foundation.” He said that Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor had not been aware of advance plans for the Mass; he did not reveal that Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor had telephoned him that morning and asked him not to participate.
The current chairman of CAFOD, Bishop John Rawsthorne, did attend the Mass, which was eventually celebrated by Father Jim O’Keefe, the president of Ushaw, a seminary in the north of England.
Damage control
The following day, shock waves rippled through Catholic parishes in England and Wales, as the ordinary faithful reflected that they were, through their regular contributions to the Sunday collections, regular supporters of CAFOD. Shaken parishioners told priests that they did not contribute to CAFOD in order to fund “gay champagne breakfasts.”
By Monday, the press office of CAFOD was denying any link between the Mass and the charity. It was, they claimed, a “private event.” Yet Heythrop College, which had hosted the Mass, explained it thought the service to be a CAFOD event. Bishop Crowley apologized to Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor for creating a difficult situation. The cardinal in turn rang up the Catholic newspapers as they were going to press, to inform them that he had accepted Crowley’s apology.
Bishop Crowley then disappeared on a short trip to Amsterdam and his spokesman told the Catholic press that Bishop Crowley had no idea that Filochowski and Pendergast were homosexual partners. It is understood that Bishop Crowley is now under investigation by Rome.
Officials at the Vatican were thoroughly shaken by the reports about the Mass for Pendergast and Filochowski—which came to their attention when a curial official spotted the story in an Internet edition of the Daily Telegraph on June 10. The event finally laid to rest the “moderate” line that had been adopted by some Italian clerics in the Curia, who had dismissed talk of a crisis in the English Church as exaggerated. The English bishops must be good shepherds, these Vatican officials had reasoned; after all, Rome had appointed them!
A dissident’s promotion stopped
The same weekend, a story in the Catholic Times reported that the English hierarchy was sending a priest who directly opposed Church teaching to teach at the top English seminary in Rome. Father Robert Esdaile—whose support for the anti-nuclear movement Greenpeace has won him the sobriquet “the Rainbow Warrior”—had been appointed as theology tutor to the Venerable English College in Rome.
Many seminarians in Rome united to oppose Father Esdaile’s appointment, on the grounds that his letters to the left-wing Guardian newspaper in Britain had made clear his opposition to the Church’s teaching on women’s ordination. They posted his letters on the bulletin board at the English College. In one of those letters, Father Esdaile described himself as “a non-Mary-fixated celibate male supporter of women’s ordination.” In another, he wrote: “The best way of symbolizing a real will to improve women’s status would be the appointment of women cardinals (a theologically unproblematic step). But of course, that will be over the present Pope’s dead body—and therefore need not be far off.”
Questioned by the Catholic Times newspaper about his approach to the liturgy, Father Esdaile said:
We should be imaginative—even with the Eucharist. In some situations, such as virtually any liturgy in schools, it may be right to dispense with the front part of the Eucharistic prayers. I think we need to get back to powerful symbols, like fire, earth, and water in our liturgies.
Father Esdaile said that in his current job, as chaplain to Sussex University, he followed a “fairly traditional” model of the Mass—which did, however include occasionally dispensing with the Creed. The seminary rector, Msgr. Pat Kilgarriff, defended Father Esdaile, saying: “Rob is a fine priest and he’s been appointed on those grounds. His views are private. He’s a loyal priest and I think it is a bit strong to say that he is opposed to Church teaching.” Several students, however, protested to their bishops, while a representative of the student body wrote a formal complaint to Msgr. Kilgarriff.
The outraged reaction of the English College students in response to the Esdaile appointment should be understood in the light of reports that had appeared in the Catholic press earlier this year, exposing deep-seated tensions between the orthodox seminarians of today and the seminary staff members who had received their own academic training in the tumultuous 1960s. The Catholic Herald reported that the “Ratzinger generation” of seminarians, who approved of John Paul II and supported the magisterium, clashed frequently with the “flower power” ideologues who were training them. As in American seminaries, expulsions of orthodox seminarians who refused to disguise their “right-wing” behavior had occurred, although one favored student whose attitudes had been deemed “very pastoral” by the English College staff is now a convicted pedophile.
Responding to the outcries against his appointment, Father Esdaile offered to resign his appointment if the English and Welsh bishops deemed that the best course for the seminary. But they assured him of their support. Then the bishops contacted the Vatican’s Congregation for Education. According to a report in the Catholic weekly the Tablet, the Congregation said they would be happy with the choice if the English bishops were happy. Then without warning—as the Tablet reported the story—the Congregation for Education blocked Father Esdaile’s appointment.
Sources in Rome point out that normally Vatican officials encourage national bishops’ conferences to act on their own initiative in such matters. It is not entirely clear precisely what happened with Father Esdaile; two differing interpretations are in circulation. One, issuing from Rome, suggests that the Congregation for Education contacted the English bishops’ conference and indicated its disapproval. The bishops, already highly embarrassed by the CAFOD fiasco, then blocked Father Esdaile—but, in order to soothe him and deflect criticism from themselves, indicated that the Vatican was responsible for the move. The other hypothesis is that the Congregation for Education acted after the English bishops failed to take a very strong hint.
Supporters of the first argument observe the Vatican has no right of approval over any college appointments apart from that of the rector. Proponents of the second hypothesis highlight the fact that the Congregation for Education has previously had a hand in other appointments to the faculty of Rome’s universities and colleges. Whatever the truth of the matter may be, it is intriguing to note that the English bishops apparently felt it important to contact the Vatican in the first place, despite the fact that such an appointment would ordinarily be considered a routine matter.
No one in Rome, from any faction in the Roman Curia, can have any doubt now that the English Church has a problem. Until recently, the logical conclusion would have been that some intervention from Rome is required in order to resolve the problem—especially in light of the fact that the papal nuncio in England is not regarded as a powerful figure, and is said to be impeded in his work because of his imperfect command of the English language.
The cardinal’s candor
But Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor recently indicated his own recognition that a change in the English Church is highly desirable. In a speech of unprecedented candor, delivered to the National Conference of Priests (a liberal body of which Father Esdaile is a prominent member), the cardinal said the clergy should seek to change the Catholic culture of Britain.
First, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor spoke about the shortage of priestly and religious vocations, rejecting some popular explanations:
I personally do not think that the crisis in vocations is a crisis about celibacy; rather it is a crisis of faith which affects the whole Catholic community. Do not think that the indifference of so many people in the Church, or of those baptized into the Church, is just due to the alien culture. We have to ask ourselves whether it is because we have not yet managed to find exactly where it is that people itch. And they do itch. Among the many young people whom I have met over the years, there is a desire for the things of God and the willingness to work for His Kingdom, a willingness to sacrifice themselves for that end.
Next the cardinal said that the solution to the vocations crisis, and to the need to change the culture of English Catholicism, lay in “new movements.” In Britain that category embraces both the groups born around the Mediterranean such as Opus Dei, Focolare, and the Neo-Catechumenate; and the British-born movements like Youth 2000 and Faith. These groups are united by their devotion to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and their straightforward orthodox teaching.
“These small communities are the secret for the future of the Church,” the cardinal said in response to questions after his speech. “It is no wonder that the Pope encourages these new movements, as I do myself. I think they—and I wish there were more—will find their rightful place in the Church in the West.” He reasoned that these movements had the ability to spark enthusiasm among young people and to make them happy to “stand up and be counted” as Catholics.
The cardinal’s support for the new movements “surprised many of the priests at the talk,” the Daily Telegraph reported. It also surprised many of his fellow bishops.
Since that September 5 talk, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor has refused to back away from his comments on the new movements, inviting questioners to talk to “the other bishops.” That answer too is significant, since the other bishops are generally not known for their enthusiasm in endorsing these orthodox groups.
Sources close to the episcopal conference indicate that a certain degree of panic prevailed among the English bishops following the cardinal’s speech. He had laid down an indisputable challenge to his brother bishops by openly acknowledging the failure of past decades. Whether the English bishops as a group are prepared to embrace the new movements as a model for the future of the Church is another question.
Events this summer have been a rude awakening for the English hierarchy: The Vatican’s trust in the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales has been undeniably broken, and the epoch during which English bishops successfully fudged their allegiance to Rome may finally be over.
Bess Twiston-Davies is a Catholic freelance journalist working in the United Kingdom.
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