Thanks to Fr Philip...

His post on 'Five Hard Truths' provided the back-bone to my homily this Sunday. As Advent draws near and we remember the Holy Souls during this month of November, he gives a very fitting reflection.

Anglicanorum Coetibus

The Holy See has issued the Apostolic Constitution which sets up new structures enabling Anglicans to enter into full communion with Rome. My brief reading of it suggests that they're essentially getting mini-dioceses - personal Ordinariates - giving them quite an amount of autonomy to preserve their Anglican heritage.

IV. A Personal Ordinariate is entrusted to the pastoral care of an Ordinary appointed by the Roman Pontiff.

V. The power (potestas) of the Ordinary is:

a. ordinary: connected by the law itself to the office entrusted to him by the Roman Pontiff, for both the internal forum and external forum;

b. vicarious: exercised in the name of the Roman Pontiff;

c. personal: exercised over all who belong to the Ordinariate;

This power is to be exercised jointly with that of the local Diocesan Bishop, in those cases provided for in the Complementary Norms.

Interesting... and one wonders if this is a possible structure which could be used to reconcile the SSPX?

The spin, the spin...

I note with interest this report in the Irish Times which deals with a Church of Ireland group which is supportive of Civil Partnerships for homosexual couples. Now, I don't have the time or inclination to moderate a debate about that particular issue. However, I think that it's important that we look at what one preacher is supposed to have said.

In a sermon at the chapel yesterday Rev Sharon Ferguson, of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement and a minister at the Metropolitan Community Church in London, said “those who are called by God to be our religious leaders are exhorted to remember that they are no different from the rest of us and consequently deal gently with all people”.She said: “Jesus spent his whole ministry reaching out to those rejected by the Jewish faith – lepers, tax collectors, women, gentiles, the sick and disabled, prostitutes – and he showed God’s all encompassing love for all people.“He didn’t judge them and insist that they changed their ways before sharing God’s love with them, for he knew that none of these things matter.”

Now, I don't know whether that's an accurate account of what she said, or the context in which she said it, but taking it at face value, it's applying a huge amount of spin to the Gospel itself.

Certainly, religious leaders are called to be gentle and to remember that they're made of the same flesh as everyone else. And Christ certainly spent his ministry reaching out to those on the margins.

However, it's somewhat disingenuous to suggest that lepers, tax collectors, prostitutes, gentiles and the disabled are somehow interchangeable. All received healing and forgiveness from Christ, but their situations were not identical. The woman caught in adultery was urged to go and sin no more, whilst I don't ever recall Christ telling anyone go and don't be a gentile or a woman any more.

Yes, Christ showed God's all encompassing love for everyone, regardless of what their situation was. I truly hope that the Church can continue to do that. However, He also called those He touched to a new and challenging way of life. Some took up the challenge; others, like the rich young man, turned away. Christ brought God's forgiveness and mercy because they are so needed. Whether one needs to turn to God and take up the challenge of conversion is not a matter of indifference. Christ was continually calling people to conversion - the pharisees, the tax collectors, those who hate, those who refuse to forgive, and, yes, adulterers and prostitutes. That's not a denial of God's all-encompassing love. It's a sign that God loves us too much to leave us in a state of slavery.

So, unless Rev Ferguson wants to suggest that ministers of religion should stop speaking out against financial corruption, war, thief, ingratitude and all those other ways in which we give evidence of our fallen nature, then she can't really argue that the example of Christ means that the Church shouldn't speak out against Civil Partnerships. If she wanted to argue that homosexual relations were holy and blessed, and that the Church should therefore support civil partnerships, well, I could respect her. I wouldn't agree with her, but I would respect her reasoning to a point, because it would not be denying the fact that Christianity has something to say about right and wrong.

However, the road she's taking at the moment suggests that God doesn't care about anything and that therefore the Church shouldn't take a position on any moral issue. Anyone who knows even a little about the Gospel and the history of Christianity will know that line of reasoning is bunkum.

Mathematical Ignorance

This is a good example of why I don't trust newspapers. The science editor of the Irish Times writes about the work of Nadia Baker who encourages mathematical literacy. However, he concludes with the following howler:

Ms Baker referred to something that, on the face of it, seemed a remarkable coincidence but in fact was only simple probability.

It would seem a long shot to meet someone with the same birthday date as you, but in fact in a random group of just 23 people, there is a greater than 50/50 chance of meeting someone with the same birthday as you.

You can bet on it.

No you can't! In a random group of 23 people, there is a greater than 50/50 chance that two people in that group will share a birthday. Dr Math explains it here.

HOWEVER, that's not what the article says. The article says that in a random group of 23 people, there's a 50/50 chance that I will find someone with the same birthday as myself. That's patently absurd. As a matter of fact, I would need to get a group of 183 other people together in order for the probability of one of them having the same birthday as myself be more than 50%.

Someone has seriously misunderstood the birthday problem...

Irish Priest Kidnapped

From the Irish Times:

An extensive military and army search is underway in the Philippines following the kidnapping of an Irish priest by a gang of armed men in the south of the country yesterday.

Michael Sinnott (79), a Columban Father originally from Barntown in Co Wexford, was taken away on a speedboat after six gunmen entered the Columban House in Pagadian city in the province of Zamboanga del Sur yesterday evening, and dragged him away, according to reports quoting local police.

Fr Sinnott was taking a stroll in the garden of the compound when a man knocked on the door asking for a priest. When a member of staff opened it, gunmen barged in and grabbed him.

The missionaries could not do anything “because the abductors had powerful weapons”, regional police commander Angelo Sunglao said.

The kidnappers took Fr Sinnott away by sea, Mr Sunglao said, citing fishermen in the area. The van used to take him from the house to shore was later found abandoned and burned near the Catholic mission.

Regional military commander Major General Benjamin Dolorfino said Fr Sinnott was kidnapped for ransom. Intelligence reports indicated he was taken by boat to a town in nearby Lanao del Norte province, where a large Muslim rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, is active.

Maj Gen Dolorfino said it was not clear if the Moro group or smaller but more violent al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf extremists were involved.

(snip)

Fr O’Donoghue said people from all walks of life had contacted the order to express sadness at what had happened to Fr Sinnott. “Right across the divide people are outraged that this could happen to a 79 year-old-man who has given his life to poor and to justice in this country,” he said.

The kidnapping comes nine months after Abu Sayyaf abducted three Red Cross workers on the island of Jolo. They were released one by one in a hostage crisis that lasted for six months. The group was also blamed for kidnapping Italian priest Giancarlo Bossi, who was held for more than a month in 2007.

Good News!

The most excellent Sisters of the Gospel of Life (based in Glasgow) have welcomed a new Postulant. The sisters are very much in their infancy as a congregation, but from having met them and heard much about their apostolate, I'm convinced that they have a huge amount to offer to the Church and I pray that they will thrive. Congrats to Sisters Roseann, Andrea and Amanda.

The Wedding of Tommy Tiernan

I was interested to read about the wedding of Irish Comedian Tommy Tiernan in today's Irish Times. Back in 2006 he created some controversy by performing on the Late Late show. I don't recall the details, but he generated quite a lot of ill-feeling by being very offensive about Christ and the Catholic Church. More recently, he fell afoul of the Broadcasting Complaints Commission for mimicking a man disabled in a motor accident.

A Church Wedding?
Still, I must say that I wasn't tremendously surprised that he was married in the Catholic church at Corracrin in Co. Monaghan. The right of the baptised Catholic to be married in the Church is very strongly upheld by the Code of Canon Law, and whilst Tiernan seems to have displayed little respect for the Church in the past, I'm not in a position to speculate about the current religious attitudes of himself or his bride.

Waiting for the Bride
However, the newspaper report's description of the wedding annoys me for a whole variety of reasons. Firstly, the wedding was supposed to take place at 2.30pm. Any priest will tell you that the bride being a little late is traditional, and that it's rare enough for her to be ridiculously late. In my own experience, I find that couples are usually quite good, and on those rare occasions when I've been kept waiting due to unforeseen circumstances, the bride has usually been most apologetic. However, in this case, the groom didn't arrive until 5 to 3, and the bride was a full hour and a half late, eventually showing up at 4pm. Now, one of the challenges that I have with weddings is trying to preserve an air of recollection in church beforehand. Folk are excited, and maybe some aren't frequent church-goers, so I don't run around slapping their palms with a ruler for talking in church. However, I always preface a wedding with a few words of welcome for friends and family and a reminder that they're all gathered to prayerfully accompany the couple on their big day. That, I think, helps bring things under control in the 5 or 10 minutes we spend waiting for the bride.
Now, let's be honest. I find it hard to believe that the great and the good of Irish showbiz society were quietly prayerful during the 90 minutes wait for the future Mrs Tiernan. When a wedding runs that late, it seems as though respect isn't being shown to the Church, the priest, the guests or Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.

Security Guards?
I was also disturbed by the fact that security guards were hired to keep the riff-raff (i.e. local parishioners) out of the church for the duration of the wedding. Marriage is a public act, and in Canon Law should only be performed secretly for a grave and urgent cause. (Canon 1130) Personally, I wouldn't dream of allowing any church in my parish to be closed to my parishioners in such a manner.
I'm also puzzled as to how this fits in with the provisions of the Civil Registration Act of 2004 which states:

51.—(1) A marriage may be solemnised by, and only by, a registered solemniser.
(2) A registered solemniser shall not solemnise a marriage
unless—
[...]
(c) the place where the solemnisation takes place is open to the
public,

The Cleric as Tight-rope walker
My attitude to this is pretty much the same as my attitude to the controversy surrounding the late Ronnie Drew's funeral. The Church has rules to guarantee the rights of the faithful and to assist the Christian people grow in holiness. They're often administered with a light hand for the sake of the salvation of souls. However, when it seems as though the usual procedures are set aside for the rich and famous, the Church is made to seem as though she favours those who have been successful in the eyes of the world. Preferential option for the poor, where are you? Sometimes it's a case of priests caving to pressure applied to them, at other times it's a case of an unfortunate cleric having his head turned by fame or celebrity. Sometimes my brother priests can be disloyal in having little time for the basic rules and regulations which the rest of us try to compassionately uphold. Sometimes the laity take the initiative and arrange for things to be done 'their own way' whether the clergy like it or not, and we're left in the situation of making the best of a bad situation without causing too much scandal.

I'm not in a position to make accusations or point fingers at anyone - lay or cleric - in the case of Tommy Tiernan's wedding. I don't have the inside story on how things were arranged by anyone involved in the celebration. Perhaps everything was done 'by the book' and in good faith. However, the media report of the wedding seems to raise several questions about the way in which the marriage was conducted, and seems to me to be an example of how scandal can be caused when special allowances are made for people who are only special because of worldly success. What can I do, but echo the bewilderment of the parishioners who were locked out of their own church?