Nylig pensjonert katolsk biskop i Lancaster, Patrick O’Donoghue, som nå er flytta hjem til sitt barndoms Irland, har visst alltid vært kjent for å være frittalende, og er sannsynligvis blitt enda dristigere som pensjonist. I alle fall uttaler han seg svært tydelig mot all form for radikal/ liberal utglidning i Kirken. (Fra det irske katolske tidsskriftet Alive! – s 3 i juni-nummeret 2009. Les mer om biskop O’Donoghue her.)
Cork-born Bishop Patrick O’Donoghue urged Catholic students at Oxford University to have “an enquiring fidelity” to the teaching of the Church and to abandon “the fictions foisted on us by some clergy, religious and laity who are disobedient and arrogant in their will-to-power.”
It was, for him, he said, a “great joy” being part of a Church “that has left behind the ghetto and the siege mentality,” in order to “proclaim to the world the liberating power of Christ’s Gospel.”
But he was distressed by “the pathetic situation of catechetics in this country, and the extent of ignorance and apostasy among generations of Catholics since the Vatican Council.”
The UK’s most outspoken bishop, he regretted “the diminishment of the Catholic understanding of sin, man’s need for redemption, the sacrificial nature of the Mass.”
This had led to “the virtual abandonment of Confession, the marginalisation of devotion to Mary, the intercession of the saints, and adoration of the Blessed sacrament.”
The bishop is the author of the 2-part plan for renewal called Fit for Mission? Schools and Fit for Mission? Church which has created a stir not just in Britain but around the English-speaking world.
He believed that full renewal will only happen when Catholics, particularly leaders in “schools, seminaries, parishes, and dioceses,” stop obstructing the authentic implementation of the Council and “positively engage with it.”
Another problem for the Church is the way “the secular mindset has gained a foothold in the lives of many Catholics, clergy and laity.”
It is seen in “a certain scepticism or embarrassed reserve about the supernatural dimension of the Faith.”
This has led to essential Church doctrines being downplayed: the divinity of Christ, the Real Presence, the Trinity, the Immaculate Conception.
“These bedrocks of the faith are either ignored or passed over quickly as unintelligible, irrelevant to our young people,” he told the Newman Society.
Many Catholics cannot get beyond the human. “We have clergy and laity criticising the Church as if she were only a human institution, not one that originates in the divine will,” he said, while “Christianity is reduced to an agency for the social betterment of mankind.”
The bishop gave a list of recommendations to the students, urging them to “embrace sacrifice as the hallmark of our lives and our spirituality.”
He invited them to “re-discover the devotions of the Church, such as praying the rosary, the Stations of the Cross, Benediction and regular confession. The Holy Father goes every week, so why not us also.”
He asked them to “start from the assumption” that the Church has good reasons for what she teaches, and to “search out those reasons” in the Scriptures and the Catechism.
A Catholic who says or teaches anything contrary to Church teaching should be politely but firmly challenged, “be they a lay catechist, teacher, deacon, priest or even a bishop.”
The students should take seriously the teaching “that you have a totally unique, immortal soul directly created by God, that when you die you will experience purgatory, and heaven, or hell.”
And they should “reject that wrong-headed view that dominates theology and New Testament studies that Jesus did not know himself to be the divine, the incarnate Son of God.”