The Portal October 2017 | Page 5

ragon THE P RTAL October 2017 Page 5 Snapdragon has been dreaming – again! O h dear! Getting ready for my Consecration (the Canon Lawyers call it “Episcopal Ordination”) as Bishop of Hogglestock is tougher than I realised. To begin with, I thought it would be easy peasy. The letter from the Pope said I could be consecrated by any Catholic bishop I chose. But when I chose our Ordinary, Mgr Newton, somebody dug up an old forgotten document called Apostolicae curae which, they claimed, proved that the Monsignor is not really a bishop!! I intended to make Dr Kirk my Vicar General, but … problems there too (I shall fall back on Fr Sherbrooke, who was my fag at Eton). So I shall make Geoffrey Episcopal Vicar for Gastronomy. That, actually, was Mgr Broadhurst’s idea. Hearing of my imminent elevation to the Episcopate, he wreathed his whisky in cigar smoke and murmured “Must be money in that game”. Dr Kirk will run an enterprise called La Table de l’Eveque. Top cuisine in Hogglestock Palace for those who can afford to pay through the nose. We’ve already got eighteen American billionaires signed up for it and no fewer than two Emirs. Cyril says he knows how to open a Swiss bank account and launder the money, and will only take 15% for his trouble. as it has Sunday Masses in the Extraordinary Form”. Cardinal Mueller signed a document (dated to the day before he got the push) permitting all presbyters of the Diocese of Hogglestock to celebrate the Ordinariate Use Mass. What more could any Catholic parish want than a simple choice between the Extraordinary Form and the Ordinariate Use? News of this has already leaked out, and I have 387 seminarians applying to transfer to Hogglestock, and 625 clergy asking to be incardinated. We shall reopen the enormous old derelict Jesuit College in Silverbridge as a seminary to be called St Ewold’s House. Dr James Bradley has agreed to be Rector, and I am looking for clergy with names like Finigan or Blake to staff it. Trouble, too, about the Order of Service for my Consecration. I had naturally assumed that it would be in the Sarum Rite, but here again some people are being very Rigid. Mgr Burnham thinks we should use a form he has composed himself, but Cardinal Vin is insisting on something post-Conciliar based on what the Copts and the Maronites use. In any case, the event will not take place until St Ewold’s Day (Diocesan Patron), June 31 next year, to give plenty of time for the reordering of the Cathedral. Some careful diplomacy The other transaction Cyril will mastermind is the will be needed here. During the 1970s, pretty well transference of £2,000,000 from the Contingency Fund everything of any merit – including, of course, all the of the Diocese of Hogglestock to the Ordinariate. Fr old Pugin fittings – was given away to Anglo-Catholic Redvers Harris says he knows how to square that with churches. It will be the very Devil to get everything the Charity Commissioners, and will only want 20% back, and the building work necessary to reinstate it all will cost the Earth. for his own incidental expenses. A special job, too, for Fr Hunwicke: Episcopal Vicar for the Extirpation of the Novus Ordo. We have written a diocesan policy called Extraordinary Opportunities. Its basic provision is “Each parish wi ll be allowed as many Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion But one piece of good news: a kindly Swiss bishop I met while skiing, Bernard Fellay, is giving us a very large relic of St Ewold in a magnificent baroque reliquary. I’ve asked him to preach the sermon at my Consecration. Auntie Joanna writes... continued from page 4 underlying seriousness about LOGS and all that we are trying to do. Evangelisation is a costly business, and beneath the heartiness and the laughter, the togetherness and the sense of shared beliefs and values, there is a recognition of the need for sacrifice and the urgent sense that our poor country really does need the message of Jesus Christ and that each of us is called to play a small part in sharing it.