An Unhappily Apt Time

July 6, 2006

Dear Stan

Many thanks for your ever enteresting emails. Fishers of Men (the DVD) looks like a valuable asset for parishes. It was an unhappily apt time to produce such a DVD on the priesthood as far as our local Church is concerned. We keep hitting one disaster after another.

I went into the newspaper shop today and there was Father Tony on the front pages of both our local newspapers. He conducted my father's funeral three years ago. Last year he moved to another parish 70 miles to the north in Leamington Spa near Coventry. Now he is due to appear in court in Leamington Spa on 14th July charged with downloading child pornography. The Warwickshire police have been busy examining the parish computers both in Leamington and here in Reading.

The trouble is that in October 2002 Fr O'Kelly at English Martyrs, two miles west of my parish church and 4 miles from Fr Tony's church, was arrested after a dawn raid on the presbytery and served prison time for downloading child pornography. A truly miserable end to English Martyrs' celebrating the 75th anniversary of the parish foundation.

A few months before that Fr O'Kelly, wearing his cap as Dean, had been in the local press when he consoled the parishioners at St John Bosco (4 miles east of my church) after their priest left the priesthood for undisclosed personal reasons. Given that there are only 10 priests in the Reading area, this is one heck of a casualty rate in a short time.

With the shortage of priests throughout Britain, my diocese is undergoing a massive reorganisation. The parishes will be amalgamated into Large Pastoral Areas. (Can't you just sense the BScs in Management Science behind such grisly phrases?). So the 7 parishes in Reading will disappear into 2 LPAs. How priests will work between churches and where ecclesial authority will reside are mysteries beyond the understanding of the laity and, I suspect, of the Bishop as well. The whole fiasco has of course been accompanied by mountains of glossy consultation documents full of maps, flowcharts, statistical tables and management-speak. To inflate the expenses still further, there was a large consultation conference at Reading University in July 2005.

On a happier note, last month I went to an entralling talk staged by our local branch of these Council of Christians and Jews. These are usually excellent, but the guest speaker, Roger Bolton, surpassed even the normal standard. Roger presents the regular religious program at 700 A.M. every Sunday on BBC Radio 4. (There is no separation of "church and State" in the UK). He has worked in TV and radio for 40 years, including the BBC's flagship current affairs program "Panorama". He enjoys the distinction of being fired TWICE by the BBC, probably for telling the truth about Northern Ireland. He really knows his stuff on religion and broadcasting.

He noted how the BBC executives are typically very heavily agnostic/atheist, with very little sympathy for religious attitudes. They tend to be young, with few life-altering experiences (marriage, children, death of a close relative) to enrich their understanding of life. Thus they tend to be clueless when it comes to connecting with the 70% of the British public who believe in a divine dimension to life. They are even more at sea in interpreting events in the huge areas of the world (Middle East, India, Africa, etc) where religion is literally a matter of life and death. This fits very closely with Michael Medved's description of the utterly secular Hollywood elite's attitude to religion in contrast to the deeply religious American public (See "Hollywood versus America").

Roger noted how the Catholic Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor of Westminster (pictured) has benefited from a really effective media strategy. Much of the credit must go to his very astute press officer Austin Iveragh. They have gone to the length of installing a small studio inside Archbishops' House in Westminster; thus Cormac is available for instant soundbites on radio and TV and is the most visible Christian presence on many nationwide broadcasts. It was a happy relief to get a completely unsolicited compliment on something the Catholic Church has got right.

This is all the more amazing as Cormac got off to a very shakey start at Westminster. Shortly after his promotion to Cardinal, a paedophile priest scandal surfaced in his old diocese Aundel and Brighton. Cormac had reassigned the priest to the chaplaincy at Gatwick Airport, obviously assuming that he would be "safe" in an all-adult environment. Of course, he went on to molest an adolescent boy at Gatwick. Yet Cormac survived that debacle, unlike poor Cardinal Law in Boston, and has reestablished his reputation.

In contrast, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has suffered one media mishap after another. Like Cormac, Rowan came from a provincial post (Wales in his case) straight into the national and international media lions' den in London. Here he faced twenty ravenous beasts eager to eat him for breakfast every morning. And they had plenty to chew on. Gay bishops, women bishops, doctrinal disintegration, threatened expulsion of the dissident American church, the African churches up in arms at all the American sodomites, breakdown of unity talks with the Catholics... The poor man has been bitten so many times that he has "retreated into a laager" and is suspicious and defensive in dealing with the media. "He is surrounded by poor advice", Roger observed diplomatically.

One of my acid-tongued fellow parishioners said this means Rowan and his entourage are morons. This may well be true, judging from some of the fatuous ideas I have seen coming from the top of the Anglian community, but unfortunately it confirmed another of Roger's regretful observations about the sheer bitchiness and ill will he frequently encounters among religious leaders.

Roger suggested that one way out of such media calamities is to develop a positive media strategy, taking the initiative on serious issues where the Anglicans could make an invaluable contribution, e.g. prison reform. But I suspect that they will remain immersed in idiotic debates such the proposed distinction between "Associate churches" (i.e. the Americans) and those in "full communion".

The point of my ramblings which may be relevant to you is that you ought to have Roger in your contact list for any religious project you are developing. His experience and in-depth religious knowledge are amazing and his enthusiasm for exploring new avenues and new projects undiminished by decades in the business. One idea he wants to explore is the development of the status of the Virgin Mary over 2000 years. She gets a handful of references in Scripture and is now promoted as Coredemptoress.... Roger's discourse on Mary was unfortunately interrupted by a local Catholic priest whose Marian knowledge is suspect to put it mildly. I hope he is not the next priest to fall off the wagon as we can't afford to lose any more.

Best wishes

Bill