Catholic and Loving it!

Via Catholic Action UK...

Will Heaven, York student and Catholic Herald contributor:

I went to a Mass in York Minster on Thursday to celebrate 400 years since Mary Ward founded the Loreto sisters. It was a historic occasion - it's not often the Anglican dean and chapter lend the magnificent building to the Catholic Church for Mass.

But we blew it. Although most of the service was lovely, just before the Gospel the Bible was danced down the nave by five teenage girls in sashes doing a sort of modern expressive dance.

Mickens [ghastly Rome correspondent of the Tablet] would have loved it. And Cormac Murphy-O'Connor sure looked as if he enjoyed the show from his throne. But it was clearly a youth mass, so did young Catholics like what they saw? The Catholic girls I went with - all educated by Mary Ward sisters - buried their heads in their hands when the dance started. I tried to speak to one of the dancers at the end, but she rushed out of the Church very quickly. I wonder why.

Will Heaven is a twenty-something year old man, like myself. If only we were both sixty year old women we would probably get votes. But we don't.

Anyway, Catholic Action UK is asking that everybody write to Bishop Drainey about this. They've even provided a picture so we will recognise him if we happen to pass in the street...

They write...

Action: readers in the diocese of Middlesbrough should complain to the newly ordained Bishop Drainey, and copy their letters to the Congregation for Divine Worship. Refresh your memories of Cardinal Arinze's views on liturgical dance here.

Curial Office, 50a The Avenue,
Linthorpe, Middlesbrough TS5 6QT
E-mail: financialsecretary@dioceseofmiddlesbrough.co.uk

Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments
10 Piazza Pio XII
00120 Vatican
Italy

Bishop Drainey, the Cardinal and several other Bishops were there for heaven's sake. They know what happened.

If they are going to do anything about it, they will do it secretly behind closed doors. That's the modern way. Leave as many laypeople as possible thinking something is allowed by not condemning it and then quietly in private if pushed admit that it's not okay. That way you have laypeople in parishes saying "it happened in York and the Bishop was there so it must be okay" and priests saying "well it's not allowed". Good way to create unity in the Church - give a different message to different people.

Confusion is the way of the future!

Personally, I think Bishops are public teachers and are supposed to teach. If liturgical dancing is unacceptable, it should be made clear. We need to see headlines in newspapers: "Grumpy Bishops Ban Dance". Then we'll know where we stand.