THE P RTAL
January 2015
Page 24
To modernise
or not, that
is the question
As the debate on marriage discipline continues,
Geoffrey Kirk continues to share his thoughts
It seems
to be a moot point whether Pope Francis has given his unequivocal imprimatur to the liberal
protagonists in the debate about sex and the family. But there is no doubt where the liberal, ‘merciful’,
agenda originates. The seat of liberalism in the Catholic Church is located (as it has been since Vatican II) on
a French/Dutch/German axis. It emanates (as one would expect) from churches in terminal decline.
accommodate
or wither into insignificance?
the remarried will flock into the pews, and their Euros
will tumble into the coffers. So ‘mercy’ sits down with
Ordinariate Catholics who have not entirely mammon.
forgotten their Anglican past will be aware of the
power of the notion of ‘relevance’: the Church must analysis fundamentally flawed
accommodate itself to the ambient culture or wither
Ordinariate Catholics will recall claims in the Church
into insignificance.
of England that the ordination of women would
reverse decline and fill the churches with the bright
‘We are in danger’, George Carey told the General young women who (allegedly) had deserted in disgust
Synod, if we do not ordain women, ‘of not being heard.’ at ‘institutional sexism’. They will also recall that the
That is, of course, true of established Churches – look at analysis was fundamentally flawed – the deficit was in
Sweden and Norway – but it is just as true of churches men, not women. And they will reflect that, of course,
which strive to be the churches of the Establishment. the panacea has not worked.
The nearer the institution comes to hitting the
buffers numerically, what is more, the more strident
are the cries for relaxation of dogma. ‘Relevance’ is all.
So churches like the German and the French naturally
fall victim to the fallacy. In France there are now only
about 14000 priests of whom half are over 75. In the
whole country only 87 diocesan priests were ordained
in 2009.
They will remember Gary Bennett’s lapidary
observation about the apparatchiks surrounding
Robert Runcie: ‘men of liberal disposition and a
moderately Catholic style which is not taken to the
point of having firm principles…men who have
nothing to prevent them following what they think is
the wish of the majority of the moment’.
Perish the thought that the same might ever be said
In Germany (the richest church in the West, thanks to of the Hierarchy of England and Wales.
the kirchensteuer [churchtax]) numbers are declining
precipitately, and members are withdraw