Sunday 6 February 2011

'The deep crisis of our Church demands that we address even those problems which, at first glance, do not have anything directly to do with the abuse scandal and its decades-long cover-up. '

Say some theologians in Germany.

Anyone would think the Pope was going there soon or something. Oh, he is.

Great logic. Bad things have happenened and been handled very badly, ergo we can change stuff we don't like.

20 years ago, when I was a student, the Anglican chaplain of a neighbouring college told me he was sure that the Catholic Church would have women priests in 10 years. Right.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I offended my former moral tutor immensely when, at post-Finals drinks, he asked me what I was doing, I said going to study theology, he said "are you going for the priesthood" I said "no no, I'm Catholic, we don't do women priests" he said "Ach, don't worry, you will soon enough" I said "no we won't" (repeat a bit, both parties expanding their statements slightly) then I proposed a bet - if the Church began ordaining women at some point even in the distant future, I would buy him a drink at the Last Judgment, and if it didn't, he'd owe me one. He was really quite offended.

I still think about this every so often. Was it a rude thing to say? I wasn't at all annoyed or irritated, and though I noticed he may have been slightly annoyed, I couldn't see why, and the whole conversation was maintained in what I had thought was a genuinely friendly bantering tone.

leutgeb said...

Hard to tell what other people will find offensive, especially in the world of other denominations.

People just don't like it when you disagree, I guess, however politely, gently etc.

Liberal consensus 'n' all.

You do it your way and we'll do it His way etc.

I can last about the length of a meal before saying something out of turn.

Patrick Sheridan said...

I am pretty sure the Roman Church will have priest-women one day too - it just depends upon the whim of the reigning Pope. I mean if sixty years ago you had the Old Rite, and now...well what we have now, I don't see that the ordination of women is any different...

leutgeb said...

Even though JPII pointed out that the Church does not have the authority to ordain woman and the matter is closed?

I think that it's more likely that the last 50 years will be put into brackets in future histories of the Church, rather than these years being the start of some new way of being Catholic. Well that's my hope anyway.

Ah, the years when we forgot Latin, composed rubbish vernacular music and generally made things up as we went along. Move on by.

Anonymous said...

Do you have to teach folky stuff for GCSE? We had to be able to recognise various Scottish ethnicky things for standard grade, and the examples were always hissy recordings of ancient people that make the old Solesmes recordings sound more vigorous than a football crowd of opera singers.

Anyway, if you do, here's an example for puirt a beul/mouth music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aChSCpczhzo&NR=1

leutgeb said...

Well now you come to mention it this is the only syllabus ( 6 in 18 years) that I have taught that has any music that could be described as effnik and from the British Isles, in that Capercaillie have a song, a re-working of a waulking song. My class serious answers on the teaing of wool and the making of tweed for their mock. WJEC (Welsh Joint etc) have Welsh stuff but OCR, AQA and Edexcel of yore, ignore the folksy stuff of the UK.

Also revolutionary is the mention of St Philip Neri in the Chapter on Messiah in the context of the history of the oratorio.

Next year I switch to IGCSE, so this is one hit wonder for me.