Hardest time to be Catholic since Reformation...
Blogged by James Preece on 12th December 2011
Must be some crazy blogger with an axe to grind.
THE BISHOP of Shrewsbury has said it is now the hardest time to be a Catholic since 'the days of persecution'. Bishop Mark Davies said that more obstacles were now placed in the way of young people going to Church, who had been failed by an older generation that did not adequately pass the faith on to them. During Mass last weekend he said: 'It isn't so much Sunday working, Sunday shopping, social lives which block out Saturday nights and Sunday mornings but losing sight of Jesus himself, which eclipses Sunday, not knowing where he is found which leaves it empty.' [The Tablet] 1787.13
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Oh wait...
Reader Comments
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Scout said...
Here we go again. Poor, persecuted UK Catholics. Wicked, evil, godless atheists/secularists/humanists/liberals/whatever
Has anyone considered that Catholics in Britain today enjoy more religious freedom than at any other time in our history? There are parts of the world, like in China, Pakistan and Vietnam, where Catholics are experiencing genuine, actual religious discrimination. Don't you belittle the cause of those Catholics by moaning your heads off like this in the United Kingdom? How can you expect the British government to urge Pakistan to do more for Pakistani Catholics when the Pakistan leaders can turn around and say "Oh look, your Catholics say they are persecuted too, just as ours do, so what right have you to lecture us?"
Western persecution-complex Catholics need to get serious!
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Ben Trovato said...
Scout,
Suggest you read pieces before your knee jerks. There is no complaint of persecution here, paranoid or otherwise; rather a tragic recognition of a failure within the Catholic Community.
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Mark Dobson said...
Seconded.
If you look at the quote more attentively Scout, you'll see that "now" is actually contrasted with "the days of persecution", so there's no need for anyone to get their knickers in a twist over the kind of hyperbole that you're complaining about.
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Scout said...
I take the point Ben and Mark are making. I am..ermm...wrong (interesting feeling this). Sort of, anyway. Not completely, though. Just look at the language - "days of persecution", "hardest time to be a Catholic since the Reformation"... it's not difficult to see the underlying point they are harking on about.
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Mark Dobson said...
There was active persecution once upon a time in England though; are we forbidden to mention it?
There was also persecution of Protestants; ugly times.
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New Friend said...
Mark
Thats right. They were ugly times, but they were long ago and, hopefully, we have all learned better. What seems silly is when they are referred to as though they only happened yesterday, or are still happening today.
As an aside, but an interesting one nevertheless, I used to own a care home in Norfolk called "Bilney Hall". The village of Bilney was named after "Thomas Bilney", a martyr burned in Norwich. If you are interested his story can be easily found on the web. I think it is a pretty good lesson as to why we need to drop the persecution arguments.
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Patricius said...
Indeed a bit of active persecution might wake some of us up! Actually the eighteenth century - after the end of the period of ative persecution and before Catholic Emancipation - seems to me to run a close second. Many Catholic families who had survived the period of active persecution apostasised then and the quiet heroism of those who remained faithful is, in my opinion, sadly overlooked. In some senses, their period is remarkably similar to our own.
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Richard Collins said...
Thank God for a great Bishop - he must stand in "splendid isolation" as far as the Magic Circle is concerned.
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Kenny said...
Older people did not adequately pass on faith, because, they themselves were so poorly taught.
The biggest problems in the Church today are almost entirely the making of modenrist Hierarchy and Priests. We lay folk are given little with which to fight the pressures of the world. We have to find the strength ourselves, and of course from The Lord. But with little help from his Holy Church.
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Mockery of the Sacraments said...
'It isn't so much Sunday working, Sunday shopping, social lives which block out Saturday nights and Sunday mornings but losing sight of Jesus himself, which eclipses Sunday, not knowing where he is found which leaves it empty.'~+Davies
One can only think of the generations born to Catholic parents or sent to Catholic school who nodded their way through mass & paid sullen lip service to the faith until they were old enough to walk away. They now form a fire-break between the old faithful & the impressionable young.
LOL! Todays youth must see so few young adult Catholics at mass & so few men in general that they will see the faith as a business for grey-haired grannies.
A fair portion of those under 50 will either be recent immigrants or else pushy parents gaming the system to get their kids into the church school. LOL! That last category worship the One True Faith-a decent OFSTED report.
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New Friend said...
When I attended mass with my Catholic wife (who is an immigrant) I observed your description of the congregation to be fairly accurate. Our town has a large number of eastern european migrant workers so there were a good number of Poles there, along with Filipino care workers and nurses. They treated Church as social gathering point, a place to meet their fellow countrymen and to build social networks. Their faith was a habit. As they became immersed in British culture and more confident they tended to drift away, leaving just the new arrivals and the older, mostly female, British members, who bye and large, were a seriously weird bunch. It you were a youngster you would not want your mates to know you were associating with these people. Your street cred would go below minus. It did not help that the Priest was originally from Africa whose English was very hard to follow and whose sermons totally confusing. My wife soon gave up and is now just a "cultural Catholic". It is part of her history, she enjoys visiting Churches, and remains true to many of the good lessons it has given her but she rejects much of what she now recognises as outdated dogma. Things for their own sake but without any true substance.
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Eoin said...
You never tire of posting any old tosh that chips away at faith. You are sussed old/new friend. A fraud!
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New Friend said...
Eoin
I have never denied being both an old, and a new friend. Depends who I am addressing as to which epithet I use. Just because you might not agree with me does not turn me into a fraud! I could just as easily say the Catholic faith is a fraud, indeed it would be pretty easy to construct a convincing case for just such an assertion.
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Ben Trovato said...
Hmm, Scout and NF both comment. Both get +2 Yays. Call me cynical...
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Jonathan Marshall said...
All right Ben, if you insist - "you're cynical" - but that doesn't mean you're wrong!
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Salsibury J said...
and at least one of those 'yes' votes will be their own ben
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New Friend said...
Sorry to disappoint but it wasn't me. I have never given myself a "yay", nor actually have I given anyone else one either!
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Mockery of the Sacraments said...
Ben Trovato, I offered one of the yays to New Friend for his reply to my comment. I thought that what he had to say about the way immigrants use the church for networking when they first arrive in the UK was a very worthwhile remark.
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Ben Trovato said...
I stand corrected and apologise for the unjustified smear on their good names.
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New Friend said...
Thank you Ben.
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Eoin said...
Do not believe a word of it, Ben.
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New Friend said...
Eoin
Are you suggesting I am a lier? I hope not! You are entitled to disagree with me but a lier I am not.
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Eoin said...
I m not sure what a "lier" is. But if you mean LIAR. Well if the cap fits, wear it.
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New Friend said...
Eoin
The only one fit to wear that cap my friend is you, if you persist in suggesting I am not telling the truth, for that is itself a lie.
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