The Catholic Church is dying, perhaps the Catholic Church is already dead.

It may suprise you to hear me say that, but we have to face facts. Our congregations are ageing, our numbers are dwindling, our buildings are crumbling. Much of what is called "Catholic" is nothing but a hollow shell. At the "Catholic" school that my daughter will soon attend only one member of staff is a practising Catholic, probably by the time she gets there it will probably be none. Even many of our "Catholic" parishes are nothing more than jumped up community centres, clubs for nice people to meet and be nice while so called "Catholic" priests inform them of how wonderful they are to give a few quid to Cafod.

Had a cheery Easter then James?

The simple fact is that parishes, schools, priests and even bishops with the word "Catholic" on the label no longer do exactly what it says on the tin. It's a bit strong to call that a "lie", it's more of a cartoon deception. It's like Wiley Coyote when he's just run over the edge of a cliff but he hasn't quite looked down yet. Formerly Catholic institutions bumbling along under the old name, desperately trying not to look down, trying to pretend everything is okay.

Well it isn't.

Anybody who knows their history knows that when Henry VIII demanded that the bishops of England side with him against the Pope all but one of them agreed. Every single bishop in the country except one. How could every bishop in the country cave in so easily? The answer is simple, the bishops had caved in long before. They already resented the influence of Rome, they had already accepted the comfort and prestige that comes from befriending ruling powers, they were moderate and diplomatic, slow to act, careful not to offend. They had already ran off the edge of the cliff. All Henry VIII did was cause them to look down.

But James, that was then, that was history. History finished in the 1960's with the Second Vatican Council and the invention of sex. we live in the modern world where everything is wonderful and nothing ever happens.

Ha ha ha ha. Does anybody really believe that?

In her recent article in the Catholic Herald, Anna Arco writes about Fr Josef Friedl, an Austrian "Catholic" priest who has admitted to living with his girlfriend. "I am 65 now. Why should I lie?" he said, pointing out that his "Catholic" parishioners know all about it and don't mind. Another Austrian priest, Fr Peter Paul Kaspar, said that lots of "Catholic" priests in Austria have girlfriends and the Bishop knows all about it. The Bishop knows of priests with girlfriends but he does nothing.

In Australia Fr Peter Kennedy is founding his own 'community in excile'. For thirty years he has been in and out of the news for dubious Baptisms and other fun and games and his Bishop has done, guess what... nothing.

More locally... Ah yes. The Diocese of Middlesbrough, where all is perfect and nothing untoward ever happens. None of our confessionals are store cupboards, none of our absolutions are general, none of our "Catholic" schools allow government agencies who promote abortion services to come to the school and advertise. Oh no. None of that going on around here. The bishop would do something...

Heh. Did you think that not blogging for lent would mellow me out?

Our bishop is a nice guy, I like him, but does he realise he's captain of the Titanic? I'm not talking about the early stages either, when we've just struck the iceberg and a few people are saying the ship is going to sink but nobody believes them because all seems well. I'm talking about the later stages, when the propeller is in the air and hundreds of people are already in the water drowning.

So what happened? Why are we sinking?

Some blame the Second Vatican Council but I doubt the council is any more responsible for the decline of the Church than the Synod of Whitby. Others say the Church is being killed by being too conservative, that if the Church only loosened up a little she might survive. Richard Dawkins and the New Atheists haven't kill the Church, they have come like vultures to peck at the corpse and check the pockets for loose change. Maybe Science is killing the Church? Personally, I think the smart money is on Moral Relativism.

Whatever it is that is killing the Church, it's too late to do anything now.

So why are you still smiling?

Because there's some I ought to tell you... I'm not left handed either!

Okay, so I am left handed, but that's not the point. The point is that the Church has a trick up her sleeve, an ace card, a ruse, a flanking manoeuvre. We are an Easter people. Just when you think she is dead, she is alive. This is not the first time this has happened. As Chesterton notes in his great classic, The Everlasting Man, the faith has died many times before.

I have said that Asia and the ancient world had an air of being too old to die. Christendom has had the very opposite fate. Christendom has had a series of revolutions and in each one of them Christianity has died. Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.

[...]

The Faith is always converting the age, not as an old religion but as a new religion. This truth is hidden from many by a convention that is too little noticed. Curiously enough, it is a convention of the sort which those who ignore it claim especially to detect and denounce. They are always telling us that priests and ceremonies are not religion and that religious organisation can be a hollow sham, but they hardly realise how true it is. It is so true that three or four times at least in the history of Christendom the whole soul seemed to have gone out of Christianity; and almost every man in his heart expected its end.

[...]

This fact is only masked in medieval and other times by that very official religion which such critics pride themselves on seeing through. Christianity remained the official religion of a Renaissance prince or the official religion of an eighteenth-century bishop, just as an ancient mythology remained the official religion of Julius Caesar or the Arian creed long remained the official religion of Julian the Apostate. But there was a difference between the cases of Julius and of Julian; because the Church had begun its strange career. There was no reason why men like Julius should not worship gods like Jupiter for ever in public and laugh at them for ever in private. But when Julian treated Christianity as dead, he found it had come to life again.

[...]

Arianism, as has been said, had every human appearance of being the natural way in which that particular superstition of Constantine might be expected to peter out. All the ordinary stages had been passed through; the creed had become a respectable thing, had become a ritual thing, had then been modified into a rational thing; and the rationalists were ready to dissipate the last remains of it, just as they do to-day. When Christianity rose again suddenly and threw them, it was almost as unexpected as Christ rising from the dead.

I am joyous this Easter because I am full of hope, because I know that the Church is dying and yet it will continue to live.

The "Catholic" priests who openly defy the Bishop and the Pope, the "Catholic" schools with their "Catholic" ethos and their dodgy careers advice services and their "Catholic" RE departments with dodgy textbooks. The Church there is dead. It has gone in to the tomb and the stone has been rolled over the entrance. These so called "Catholic" institutions are like the crumpled up wrapper of last years Easter egg. The chocolate is gone. Jesus is no longer shown nailed to a cross in the classroom, instead he is pinned to the mission statement like a dead insect. An artefact, a historical curiosity, a platitude in an ethos. What they call an "ethos" I call a shroud, a paper shroud in which Christ is wrapped for burial in a drawer or a filing cabinet.

Chesterton continues...

There are people who say they wish Christianity to remain as a spirit. They mean, very literally, that they wish it to remain as a ghost. But it is not going to remain as a ghost. What follows this process of apparent death is not the lingerings of the shade; it is the resurrection of the body. These people are quite prepared to shed pious and reverential tears over the Sepulchre of the Son of Man; what they are not prepared for is the Son of God walking once more upon the hills of morning.

The Titanic may be sinking, but the waters of death are the waters of Baptism and the Church will rise again.

The next few years are going to be very interesting indeed.

Well this was one packed Easter! Leona was really good at all the Masses and the Solemn Liturgy on Friday. James sang his psalm wonderfully - the swine he is just so jammy! Mine was a bit wobbly at first because it was really high but James said it sounded alright so I dunno.

I felt our basket of blessed food was the best yet this year complete with symbolic sheep buns :o) - this year there were three packed churches of Pols!! Fr Radoslaw did his best to encourage them to come to Polish mass so it is not just the English!

We also managed to get our ginger bread Easter house made in time, we were a bit worried that the walls would not hold the weight of all the mini eggs but it was ok.

James is especially excited about this wall of eggs!

Many thanks to James' Auntie Annie who gave us the gingerbread house and who we in fact saw on the Saturday for the second sitting of food blessing... she was there with a friend, it was a wonder we saw her there were so many people!

We also got our Easter tree up this year but did not get the chance to make a simnel cake.

I was hoping to do a blow by blow account of Easter this year, but what with the a passover meal on Tuesday of Holy Week, washing of the feet on Maunday Thursday, veneration of the cross on Good Friday, the Blessing of the Food and the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday and mass again on Easter Sunday I have had too much to write about and little time to write it. So, the highlights.

The passover dinner on Easter Tuesday at Michelle's was good because she made really nice lamb and we got to get in to the whole passover vibe. I think the whole four cups of wine thing is really interesting (ask Moses). When supper was ended he took the cup... the third cup is the one drank after the meal. The cup of redemption, then He says something along the lines of 'I will not drink wine again until I am with my father'. On the cross right at the end Jesus drinks some vinegar (some translations say 'bitter wine') from a hyssop stick. Is that cup number four? I haven't the foggiest and nobody can tell me because the people who are supposed to be studying these things and telling me all about it are too busy going through the RSV with a pair of scissors...

The washing of the feet on Thursday was interesting in that it was my first time ever in Corpus Christi which is the church nearest to my childhood home but not my childhood parish (the boundaries are a silly shape and people cared about things like that back then). It has a rather striking gothic arch over the apse containing the altar. Unfortunately the people of Corpus Christi suffer greatly from Digital Hymnal Syndrome.

On Good Friday no masses are celebrated anywhere in the entire Roman Catholic world. So sayeth the Massie. We went to St. Wilfrid's (which was rather apt considering St. Wilfrid set us straight on the proper date for celebrating Easter) for Veneration of the Cross. I still feel there's something a little odd about the priest singing "this is the wood of the cross on which hung the savior of the world" when we all know full well that it isn't. Fr Massie pointed out that the stations of the cross in St. Wilfrid's feature hands very prominently including the one for "Christ is Condemned to Death" which features a pair of hands bound and a pair of hands washing themselves. The irony is of course that the hands bound are the only truly free hands in the world and the hands washing themselves are not free at all. See Fr, I was listening.

Saturday morning we went back to St. Wilfrid's for a Polish tradition, the blessing of the food. Poor Fr Gregory has done this in Hull, Scarborough and York. A round trip of nearly 120 miles (probably a quick pop out to the shops if you live in America but in England that's a long way). St. Wilfrid's which is an average size Parish Church was bursting and I had to stand outside and listen through the porch. When was the last time you had to do that in England?

Saturday evening was the Easter Vigil. We did that at St. Joseph's. The Easter Vigil is the best mass all year and Fr. Massie and Company did a fine rendition. Ella and I both sang psalms (!) and there was a bonfire and candles and everything.

Easter Sunday we went to mass again and this time we read. After mass there was a prize draw for a hamper full of chocolate eggs.

So, that's Easter in Hull. A bit religious. The baby slept through it all. She is v well behaved at Church. How handy.