Catholic and Loving it!

Pope John Paul II had "Culture of Death", Pope Benedict XVI has "Dictatorship of Relativism". All the coolest of ecclesiastical cats have their catchphrases and Archbishop Vincent Nichols is no different.

Last week in an interview with the Catholic Herald he said...

"Most troubling of all to my mind is the mindset that somebody might get caught into, because perhaps they don't like some aspect of how the Mass is being celebrated or the music that's been chosen or something, that they begin to turn their back on the Church's ordinary pattern of prayer, the ordinary form of the Mass and say: 'I can't accept that.' That's really quite serious, because if they can't accept that then they are inexorably distancing themselves from the Church."

[Catholic Herald]

This weeks editorial in The Tablet carries the following quote from a foreword the he wrote for a Latin Mass training conference...

Archbishop Nichol gives no shred of encouragement to those who want the Tridentine Rite to replace the newer version. Conference participants “will wholeheartedly celebrate the Mass in each of these forms”, he instructs them bluntly, adding: “The view that the ordinary form of the Mass, in itself, is in some way deficient finds no place here.” People who hold that view are “inexorably distancing themselves from the Church”, he says.

The Tablet

There's a few things I find interesting here.

The word "inexorably" is very strong. A quick google gives me the following definition of inexorable...

in⋅ex⋅o⋅ra⋅ble [in-ek-ser-uh-buhl]

-adjective

1. unyielding; unalterable: inexorable truth; inexorable justice.

2. not to be persuaded, moved, or affected by prayers or entreaties: an inexorable creditor.

[Reference.com]

So the Archbishop talks not just of distancing oneself from the Church but of doing so in a way that is "unalterable". I find it difficult to believe he means that (perhaps inexorable means different things to different people) because I'm not sure it's even theologically possible to distance oneself from the Church in a way that is "unalterable" this side of the grave.

I assume he means something more along the lines of "in a way that is very serious".

Then we have the phrase "distancing themselves from the Church" is very weak. Is it a euphemism for "separating themselves from the Church"? I mean, how do you distance yourself from something without separating yourself from it?

The whole phrase put together ends up meaning "very seriously separating themselves from the Church" which sounds an awful lot like a way of saying "excommunication" without actually saying it.

The first time these seriously separated people are those who "begin to turn their back on the Church's ordinary pattern of prayer, the ordinary form of the Mass and say: 'I can't accept that.'" and the second time it's those holding "The view that the ordinary form of the Mass, in itself, is in some way deficient"

He seems to be directing these words at traditionalists, the first time he was answering an interview question about the extraordinary form, the second time writing to priests at a Latin Mass training conference. But come on! Who is really turning their back on the ordinary form of the Mass? Who really thinks it is deficient?

It might apply to a small minority of traditionalists, but on the whole this applies far more literally to Fr Fun with his "the Mass is deficient, I need to fix it by changing the words" mentality. I've written extensively about this (here) but it seems to me that the Archbishop and all the Bishops of England and Wales are complicit in this by their wholesale widespread turning of a blind eye and even in many cases joining with the abuses themselves.

Finally, I find it interesting who he is not saying it to.

Why did we not read in the newspapers that Archbishop Vincent Nichols thinks Terry Prendergast is inexorably distancing himself from the Church?