Sort of. Maybe. Perhaps.

What I mean is that if you email Bishop Drainey a quote from Ed Balls and then email Bishop Drainey again to point out that the answer you got sort of sidestepped the subject at hand then Bishop Drainey will say something...

This is what Ed Balls said on the radio:

They must give a balanced view on abortion, they must give both sides of the argument, they must explain how to access an abortion, the same is true on contraception as well.

This is what I got from Bishop Drainey's secretary when I asked her if Bishop Drainey had anything to say on the matter:

The Bishop of Middlesbrough has no intention of allowing schools in the Diocese of Middlesbrough to teach ‘how to use contraception’ or ‘explain how to access an abortion’.

This is good news... The Bishop of Middlesbrough has no intention of allowing his schools to explain how to access an abortion.

The Bad News? Well, his secretary prefixed that with this...

Bishop Terry has asked me to forward the undermentioned, and suggests you refer directly to the CES in future as they are the main Agency concerning educational matters for the CBCEW.

So CES tell me they support the Bishops and can't speak for the Bishops, but when I speak to my Bishop he refers me back to CES!

A letter was read at Mass this morning in the three diocese of Hallam, Leeds and Middlesbrough. As I listened at Mass this morning (we live in Middlesbrough diocese) it began like this...

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

You will realize that during the course of the last few years Catholic Care has been making strenuous efforts to secure its rights as an adoption agency...

My heart sank. More bad news. The adoption agency is obviously closing because of the recent "equality" legislation.

It continued...

...

Since 2007 Catholic Care has been involved in a legal battle to stay open as a Catholic adoption agency and to operate according to our beliefs in marriage and family life. Precisely because we wish to do everything possible to remain open the next stage in this legal process will take place in the High Court this week.

...

Above all, we seek your prayers especially as the High Court case begins on Wednesday. May Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, patroness of our three dioceses, intercede for us to the Lord that the good work Catholic Care has undertaken for so long may continue.

Devotedly,

+Rawsthorne +Roche +Drainey

Finally! A bit of good news. Somebody is actually fighting to be Catholic.

As Joe points out, this fight is almost certainly grounded in lay support. If Bishops Rawsthorne, Roche and Drainey had faced the situation Bishop O'Donoghue faced in Lancaster I highly doubt this fight would have continued.

In other words, don't be impressed with the Bishops. Be impressed with the trustees at Catholic Care. If the Bishops had done their job in the first place, Catholic Care wouldn't have to fight this fight at all.

Did I mention Catholic schools recently?

I've been sending emails again, this time to our very own Bishop Drainey...

To: bishopsecretary@dioceseofmiddlesborough.co.uk
Subject: The Children, Schools and Families Bill

Hi There,

Does Bishop Drainey have any public comment regarding the Children, Schools and Families bill which was passed in the commons yesterday with a majority of 91?

As Ed Balls said on Radio 4 yesterday:

"A Catholic faith school can say to their pupils we believe as a religion contraception is wrong but what they can't do is therefore say that they are not going to teach them about contraception to children, how to access contraception, or how to use contraception. What this changes is that for the first time these schools cannot just ignore these issues or teach only one side of the argument. They also have to teach that there are different views on homosexuality. They cannot teach homophobia. They must explain civil partnership. They must give a balanced view on abortion, they must give both sides of the argument, they must explain how to access an abortion, the same is true on contraception as well."

Many thanks,

James

I sent that at 8.30 this morning before leaving for work so I was quite impressed when a reply came in at 11 o'clock. Unfortunately, I was not so impressed with the contents...

Bishop Terry has asked me to send you the following response:

“The Bishop and the Schools Service of the Diocese of Middlesbrough welcomes the decision of Parliament yesterday to include amendments to the Children’s Schools and Families Bill that will allow PSHE and SRE to be delivered within the context of the religious character of each school. Catholic schools will continue to respond appropriately to the challenges that face young people as they become aware of the human potential for deep and lasting relationships and of human sexuality. The Act passed yesterday reaffirms the partnership between the State and the Catholic Church in providing schools with a religious character and the responsibility of Catholic schools to ensure that everything that is taught about relationships and sexuality is done so clearly within the context of the Church’s teaching.”

[name]

I find it hard to believe that Bishop Drainey wrote this. I've interviewed Bishop Drainey, I had a meeting with him long before that, I read all of his pastoral letters and seen him do live question and answer sessions with young people on several occasions. This is not the way he speaks.

This is beurocratic committee speak that somebody has surely written on his behalf and wonder if he has even seen it.

Note the slimy, cretinous language... "within the context of the Church's teaching." Not according to the Church's teaching but in the context of it?

People don't talk that way in real life, not unless they are deliberately trying to be ambiguous. If Bishop Drainey asked me to do something, I doubt he would be happy if I responded "I will act in the context of what you want..."

The other bit that upset me is the fact that I asked if Bishop Drainey had a public comment regarding the bill and they sent me a comment about the ammendment. Another cop out.

This is the equivalent of you saying "James, you've just heard that you have to saw your own leg off, got anything to say about that?" and me saying "I welcome the ammendment saying I can saw my leg off according to the religious character of my school". Actually, I think I might have something to say about the whole leg sawing thing.

So I replied...

"The Bishop and the Schools Service of the Diocese of Middlesbrough welcomes the decision of Parliament yesterday to include amendments to the Children’s Schools and Families Bill that will allow PSHE and SRE to be delivered within the context of the religious character of each school."

That's a response to the ammendment to the bill. Does Bishop Drainey have a public response to the full bill which, as Ed Balls stated means that schools "must explain how to access an abortion"

Thanks,

James

At the very least, if "The Bishop and the Schools Service of the Diocese of Middlesbrough" have any integrity at all, they need to respond to that phrase from the lips of Ed Balls, that Catholic schools "must explain how to access an abortion".

So far I haven't had a reply but it's early days yet. I'll let you know as soon as I do...

When I interviewed Bishop Drainey, we had the following exchange...

I explained that most young people in Middlesbrough diocese don't know the Our Father in Latin. "Well," he replied. "I think that's very sad if that's the case. It's part of our heritage and I feel very strongly about that."

[link]

He is going to need to feel very strongly if he is going to do anything about it. He is not up against one or two hippy priests, he's up against a cultural phenomena, as Jeffery Tucker describes in his preface to Msgr Marini's address...

Every Catholic has experienced it at some level, that culture of disdain for the past that has afflicted Catholicisim in the postconciliar period. It happens at our parishes, when a special guest lecturer talks about the supposed horrors Catholic school back in the day, or of how ridiculous it was that the Mass was in Latin, that we attempted to sing chant and did it so poorly, or that we went to confession behind a screen. We read about it in our catechetical materials, that contempt for what has gone before in the great age of ignorance and oppression that was finally swept away in the liberating Age of Aquarius. How unfortunate those people were and how fortunate we are in this enlightened age.

Or so we've been taught. So pervasive has this attitude been that we can speak of self-hating Catholics as a widespread cultural phenomenon. Even in our own parishes, the absence of a positive self identity seems almost required as an ground rule for every conversation. "I don't want to go back to the past of course," we are expected to say before adding any critique of the present. This attitude - this hermeneutic of discontinuity, this positing of a great divide between preconciliar and postconcilar faith - has cut us off in a strange way. Wondering used book stores we find pre-1965 books on the faith and read them like relics. We don't recognize the pictures, understand the words, or even see a familiarity in the disciplines then and now.

link

You don't fight a culture by quietly pottering away in the Cathedral and making sure Masses there contain the occasional bit of Latin. You fight a culture by doing things openly and publicly in such a way that it becomes a widely known fact that, as Bishop Drainey said to me: "It's part and parcel of being a Latin Rite Catholic to at least know the Our Father or to be able to sing the Creed and the basic things [in Latin]."

My interview with Bishop Terence Drainey will be in the coming issue of the Catholic Herald. This should especially be of interest to anybody in Middlesbrough Diocese. The Bishop speaks on...

• The fearful task of being a Bishop
• His relationship with the Bishops Conference
• The lack of porridge at World Youth Day
• Signs of traditionalism from Pope Benedict
• Where new Priests are going to come from
• Sex education in schools
• Latin and Gregorian Chant

Plenty of stuff to wave in the face of your parish priest. Especially if you want less porridge in your parish and a bit more Gregorian chant.

So, yesterday I interviewed Bishop Drainey for the Catholic Herald. There's not really much to tell you because I interviewed him for the Catholic Herald and not for my blog so I think I should keep what he said for the full write up in the Herald and not put it on here.

All in all I think it went rather well, not so much due to my interviewing skills which lets face it are average at best (it was my first time interviewing somebody) but due to Bishop Drainey's skill at answering questions. He didn't say "Yes" or "No" but instead made lots of good points which will make the interview far more interesting than if I had been faced with the old blood out of a stone scenario.

For added excitement, I thought I had an hour with the Bishop but at the last minute it turned out there was only half an hour! I had to drop quite a few of my questions. Fortunately the Bishop was very generous and long after somebody had knocked on the door to tell him the time was up he was offering another five minutes for another question.

It shouldn't suprise me, but it did, how much he had to say that falls in to the "if James said that, people would call him a fundamentalist blogger" category. What I will let slip, is that I think Bishop Drainey has a far less wimpy vision of what it means to be a Catholic than I give him credit for - perhaps because I rarely hear it.

So all in all, I'm grateful to Bishop Drainey for his time and for indulging me with fantastic answers to my questions. Obviously he dodged one or two, I think that's par for the course, but at the end of the day if he hadn't been willing to answer questions well, I would have ended up with a rubbish interview.

So get your £1.20 ready.

I'm just a bloke with a blog, so I'm not entirely sure why these things keep happening, but they do.

Earlier this year Bishop Drainey wrote in a pastoral letter...

I would say that the secular and spiritual climate generated by our culture is not favourable to these vocations, nor do they nurture a free and mature response to the call. Here I am not just talking about the wider society; I am talking about the Church, and the particular Church in this diocese of Middlesbrough.

Those are strong words so I sent an email to the Catholic Herald asking if they wanted a short article about the Bishop who criticised the culture in his own diocese (usually, Bishops are very careful to explain that everything is wonderful)

The Catholic Herald didn't want my short article, they wanted more. They asked if I would do a long Q&A interview with Bishop Drainey and so I asked Bishop Drainey if he would be willing to be interviewed. He very kindly said yes.

So, in three weeks I will be interviewing the Bishop of Middlesbrough for the Catholic Herald just in time for his second anniversary of being our Bishop.

This is where you come in - I have a great long list of things to ask (some of which I won't ask because I'm too nice) but I don't want to miss anything. So, if you have a question you would like me to put to the Bishop, let me know.

One of the patrons of our diocese is a Bishop whose faithfulness to the Holy See made him so unpopular that he was evicted from his own diocese and had to go to Rome and get the Pope to put him back in charge.

St Wilfrid had some pretty strong words for any local clergy who feel they can do things any way they like...

"But as for you and your companions, you certainly sin, if, having heard the decrees of the Apostolic See, and of the universal church, and that the same is confirmed by holy writ, you refuse to follow them; for, though your fathers were holy, do you think that their small number, in a corner of the remotest island, is to be preferred before the universal church of Christ throughout the world?"

link

1300 years later, our Bishop seems to feel the same way. Shortly after his ordination Bishop Terence Drainey said:

All my priestly life so far I have believed that the will of God is most often expressed to me in and through my superiors, especially my bishop and the teachings of the Church, proposed and proclaimed by our Holy Father, the Pope.

link

Now, I don't have a degree in theology but I would have thought that the obvious result of all this would be a clearly visible link between what goes on in Rome and Middlesbrough. A person from Middlesbrough might go to Rome and think "Ah, so this is where Bishop Drainey gets his ideas".

I don't think it's unreasonable to think that if St Wilfrid were our Bishop today then such a link would exist.

For instance, when we go to Rome we see the Pope distributing communion like this:

Last week as he marked the 1300th anniversary of St Wilfrid's death, Bishop Drainey honoured St Wilfrid by following in his footsteps by closely emulating the actions of the Pope. Or not...

I'm perfectly aware that Bishop Drainey is not being disobedient here. The Vatican have given permission for English Bishops to allow communion in the hand.

But is that really what it comes down to? Does fidelity to Pope Benedict begin and end with the bare minimum? With doing only what is required?

As examples go, it's not spectacular.

Of course, when James the fundamentalist crazy blogger makes snide remarks about Church politics everybody says how it's uncharitable and we should all only say nice things about everything. But when the Bishop of Middlesbrough does it...

Most of us want to be boss, top-dog. We like to dominate if at all possible. And we know that in reality, ‘Who’s the King of the Castle’ isn’t a children’s game at all. It is played out in our lives pretty well everyday. We see it in politics, international, national and local politics, and even family politics. Dare I say if you look very carefully you might even recognise it in Church politics?

[link]

That's different...

A few short months ago in July I did a blog entry entitled The Last Crusade in which I highlighted the fact that Terence Drainey, Bishop of Middlesbrough was using earthenware communion vessels despite the fact that he had himself pointed out to another priest the need to acquire some new chalices "in order to enhance and add even more dignity to the liturgy."

I'm pleased to say that not long after that blog entry Bishop Drainey did indeed acquire some proper chalices and very nice they are too...

We will never know of course, whether it was my blogging that lead Bishop Drainey to acquire the new chalices. The official position is to scoff at the thought that any Bishop might care what is said on some blog (you have to sort of spit as you say the word 'blog' to get the full effect) but then with at least three different computers visiting regularly from our Diocesan Curial Offices (not to mention their friends in York) who knows... Maybe Bishop Drainey heard the Holy Father's advice to "confront the challenges which arise from the new digital culture" or maybe he just got around to something he intended to do all along.

I don't really mind. The important thing is that the beauty of our Eucharistic celebrations has been improved and the dignity of the sacrament affirmed. I'm happy.

So is that the end of it?

No actually. Because aside from the materials used to make the sacred vessles used at communion, Redemptionis Sacramentum contains another arguably more important statement...

The Communion-plate for the Communion of the faithful should be retained, so as to avoid the danger of the sacred host or some fragment of it falling.

Redemptionis Sacramentum 93

The Communion-plate is held under the host (usually by an altar server) so as to collect any crumbs or fragments that may fall from it. Here's a picture of the Pope using one...

And here is a picture of Bishop Drainey not using one...

I don't think it's fair to be too hard on the Bishop, the use of the communion plate has been all but abolished across England and Wales and maybe he just doesn't know (Bishops have a lot on their minds, I'm sure).

I do think it's a worthy and noble thing to campaign for. The teaching of Redemptionis Sacramentum and the the clear example of Pope Benedict are clear: "The Communion-plate for the Communion of the faithful should be retained."