Leading US Catholic magazine: the Magic Circle is wrecking the Church in England and

Jester Minute

Outside the Magic Circle
Analysis

Tension builds between the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales and orthodox Catholics.

By Dominic Scarborough

The Holy Father’s September visit to the United Kingdom was widely regarded as a great success, both as a tonic to British lay Catholics and as a wake-up call to the country’s secular society. But the visit also highlighted the tension that exists between his pontificate and what dismayed English Catholics call the liberal “Magic Circle” of bishops who make up the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales (BCEW).

Several of its number are known to be deeply opposed both to this papacy and to that of John Paul II. The first reason for this opposition is that the members of the BCEW have been largely self-selecting from a small pool of like-minded “insiders” who come through lines of patronage that can be traced back to one man, the late Archbishop Derek Worlock of Liverpool. At the Second Vatican Council, Worlock had been one of the first of the English bishops to promote a new liberal vision for the Church.

The vision appropriated the structures, cultural loyalties, and financial contributions of the old, inward-looking, triumphalist “ghetto” Church to build a new, outward-facing Catholicism that focused on social climbing and liberal politics. Ultimately, Worlock’s vision aimed for the broader acceptance of Catholicism by the secular elite.

This post-conciliar vision of a more visible Catholic presence is, however, at odds with Pope Benedict’s conceptions of what visibility and presence require. The BCEW’s vision ever since the days of Archbishop Worlock has aimed at “liberating” Catholics from their past and helping them to embrace the values of secular society. But Pope Benedict’s vision aims at fostering orthodox Catholics who can act as a “creative minority” in the wider culture. The differences between these two visions are ultimately irreconcilable and go to the heart of the debate over the meaning of Vatican II.

[...]

The BCEW may have succeeded in opening up the doors of the Church to the world, but instead of the world walking in, Catholics have walked out, especially those who have grown up in the post-conciliar era never knowing the safety of the “ghetto” Church and who prefer to take their worldliness from the world itself rather than from a self-consciously worldly Catholicism. For many Catholics the Church now exists only to “hatch, match, and dispatch” and retains the nominal membership that it does largely because it runs the best free schools in the country.

FULL ARTICLE: http://catholicworldreport.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=223:outside-the-magic-circle&catid=53:cwr2010&Itemid=70

Jester Minute

I was thinking last night, as I was opening my monthly EWTN programme guide, that right now there are essentially two factions in the Catholic Church. There is the Catholicism of our fathers, of the Church Fathers, of the Saints, and of the Pope, and of EWTN and the Catechism, and then there is the 'Catholicism-Lite' (which isn't orthodox Catholicism but a modernist impression of it) of the Association of Catholic Priests here in Ireland, of the liberal rag 'Catholic' media' and so forth. Of course some will say there are also the traditionalists such as the SSPX who have issues (understandably I think) with some of what has gone on for the last 50 years.

I wonder how long this situation will continue. As I see it, decisions need to be made. The dissenters need to decide whether they are Catholic or not, whilst the traditionalists need to thrash out their issues and difficulties. This is already happening as the SSPX are in talks with the CDF in Rome over their doctrinal issues with the Second Vatican Council. But the dissenters have little to offer. They don't agree with Church teaching and that is that. Whilst the traditionalists have issue with what they see as conflicts between constant Church teaching and what they see as novelties of Vatican II.

Anyhow those are just some thoughts of mine.

I think it is really frustrating for the good English Catholics who are so badly served by lukewarm bishops. I guess we can only pray for better ones. Benedict apparently said that we'd have to wait for them to die off before we'd get better ones.