The poster in our church for National Youth Sunday in our diocese lists three workshops. Prayer with Jane Cook, Drama with David Barwick and something to do with CAFOD.

The diocesan website also lists three workshops but something is different. David Barwick is gone, replaced with somebody called Daniel Boyes.

Then the reality dawns.

Could it be that they don't know the names of their own employees?

This is apparently what a million pounds looks like in £5 notes...

[image source]

I only mention it, because if you happen to see any of those lying around you might want to send them to the Diocese of Middlesbrough who may be needing a few of them soon.

Catholic Church reluctant to accept its responsibility for Britain’s biggest child abuse case so far

The Middlesbrough Diocese of the Catholic Church was told by a High Court judge this week that it was responsible for a children’s home that was the centre of a large-scale abuse scandal. The diocese now faces a potential £8m compensation bill.

The abuse claims centred on the St William’s Community Home in Market Weighton, East Yorkshire. More than 140 former residents filed claims of physical and sexual abuse but it was unclear who was responsible for the home – whether it was the Middlesbrough diocese or the De La Salle Brothers, an order of lay teachers.

The case concerns alleged systematic abuse of children at the care home from 1960 until 1992 when it closed. St William’s took emotionally and behaviourally disturbed boys, aged 10 to 16, referred by councils largely from Yorkshire and the North East.

...

Judge Simon Hawkesworth QC ruled at the High Court in Leeds that the claims should be made against the diocese, and it opens the way for the biggest compensation pay outs from the Church that this country has ever seen. It is the culmination of a six year battle in which the diocese has tried every legal trick to delay the issue and try to evade responsibility. The Church still has the option of making a further appeal — claiming that De La Salle should be liable — which would delay matters for at least another year.

Solicitor for the claimants, David Greenwood, said: “It has been a long battle with the organisations responsible for the home. They have used every argument possible to resist the case and I am hopeful that the Middlesbrough Catholic diocese will consider settling the cases now."

[link]

Where is the Diocese of Middlesbrough going to find £8m? Church closures and sell offs is my guess. It's desperately frustrating for me as a lay Catholic to contemplate the fact that my Church might be sold off and all our efforts destroyed because of events somewhere else fourty years ago. It doesn't seem fair, but then, it doesn't seem fair that young boys were abused either so what right have we to complain? Life isn't fair.

What I can complain about is the present.

Why am I learning about this from the National Secular Society? If there were no such thing as the National Secular Society would I be learning about it at all? We hear all this stuff about lay involvement and "empowering" laypeople but it's smoke and mirrors. How many laypeople in our diocese know that they are liable for the biggest child abuse case in this country so far? Most of the laity I speak to are under the impression that these things happen somewhere else. America, Ireland, London... but not here.

It's hard to imagine an article about this in the Middlesbrough Catholic Voice. That magical fairy land where the sun always shines, why would the diocese publish information that makes it look bad?

Authenticity? Honesty? Openness?

Heh!

In keeping this sort of thing quiet, in burying the information away and doing their best to make sure the people in the pews don't know anything about it the Diocese are effectively maintaining the same strategy that got us in this mess: They are, in a sense, covering up child abuse. They are not hiding it from the police, they are hiding it from their own laypeople.

What worries me is that this is the cultural norm within the Church - to bury bad news and it's not healthy because it gives us a kind of moral leprosy, we hurt ourselves but we cannot feel the pain so we keep on doing it.

The phenomenon is occuring today in Catholic Education where bad news is continally buried by the likes of CES so that every time the government forces something which is contrary to Catholic teaching the CES bury it away and everybody thinks there is no crisis in Catholic schools, it's happening in Catholic Youth Work where everybody pretends that Reclaim the Future wasn't the product of the Youth Work community and that there is definitely nobody out there with funny ideas and it happens in liturgical matters where Bishops would rather pretend that Fr X never does anything wrong than announce publicly that Y shouldn't be happening.

Until we fix this fundamental cultural problem within the Church it is very difficult to trust anybody.

Until we have openness, it is difficult to see how our children can be safe. Perhaps they are not in danger of paedophiles anymore (child protection is now a top priority) but they are in grave danger of hearing dodgy teaching and witnessing dodgy liturgy and we all have to pretend that's not true.

People wonder how child abuse was able to happen within the Church for so long without anybody in authority doing anything about it. I don't wonder. They were just following standard procedure and perpetuating a culture which is favourable to abuse.

A culture which continues to exist today.

I couldn't help notice while glancing over the schedule for the visit of the relics of St Therese to Middlesbrough the following...

Young people will be leading the Mass?

Is it right and proper to speak of young people leading the Mass?

I know, I know... The person who wrote this didn't literally mean that young people would be putting on vestments and leading the Mass. Just that young people will be doing the readings and organising the music.

But that's exactly the problem - that those words can carry that meaning.

The fact that a person can write "Mass led by young people" and mean "young people will be doing the readings and organising the music" is troubling enough, but consider it the other way around. That doing the readings and organising the music has come to be synonymous with leading the Mass. Whowever reads and sings leads the Mass.

It's not hard to see why people think this way... In the minds of many Catholics reading and singing has come to be the essence of what Mass is. The readings and hymns set the theme, message and feel of the Mass and they decide whether the Mass will be somber and thoughtful or bouncy and jolly. People say things like "that was a great Mass, I loved the music and the readings were so inspirational".

Obviously Bishop Drainey will have a camero role giving the homily and then saying some stuff before everybody receives communion, but basically the stuff he does is secondary. He is seriously marginalised. He is not the headline act.

This is not the way things should be. The Liturgy of the Word is important and Music is very nice, but what Bishop Drainey does on the Altar is essentially what Mass is all about: Jesus Christ made truly present in the Eucharist. Where it says "Vigil Mass led by young people" it should actually read "Vigil Mass for young people". Done for them because they cannot do it themselves.

"Mass led by young people" should seem as ludicrous as "Car driven by jellyfish".

This is actively homosexual Episcopalian Bishop Gene Robinson and his boyfriend:

In a couple of weeks time (28th - 31st of August) the Greenbelt festival will be taking place at Cheltenham Racecourse. Greenbelt is primarily a Christian music festival though there are also speakers and workshops and so forth. This year Bishop Gene Robinson will be one of the speakers which has caused a bit of controversy in the protestant world with some evangelical groups calling for a boycott of the event.

Anglican Mainstream believes that young people could be led astray by Bishop Gene Robinson and other gay rights campaigners at the Cheltenham-based festival. It has also questioned the involvement of the Church Mission Society in the event, which attracts 20,000 people each year.

...

Commenting on the article, the Rev Canon Dr Chris Sugden said: "If nothing is done to bring into the marketplace of Greenbelt a biblically faithful point of view, publicly, that is available for people, then I think leaders of youth clubs and families should think very seriously about whether they want their young people to be in this environment; an environment where it is accepted that this [practising homosexuality] is a valid, completely acceptable expression of the Christian point of view."

He said that the gay agenda was already pushed enough at schools and in the media and that there was no need for a Christian festival to be promoting it. He added that Gene Robinson was "clearly seeking to influence a lot of people."

...

Greenbelt, which has the Archbishop of Canterbury as its patron, has been provocative on numerous occasions since it began in1974. In previous years it featured the bikini-clad dancers of the Sheffield Nine O'Clock Service (before it ended scandalously in 1995). Another year a white witch was invited to speak at the festival. Greenbelt is refusing to comment on the criticisms.

[link]

Gay Bishops? Witches? Just the sort of event you might expect to see promoted by CAFOD and the Diocese of Middlesbrough.

You think I'm joking?

Last Sunday was the "World Day of Prayer for Vocations to Priesthood and to the Consecrated Life" and our Bishop sent out a pastoral letter to mark the occasion. Yes, that's right. It was Bishop Terence Drainey who wrote:

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.

Damning words, but he didn't stop there. He also wrote...

why are we talking about a vocation’s crisis?

...

The crisis, if there is one, is of lack of response, spiritual deafness, lack of trust in God’s providence and an inability to recognise the values of the Kingdom of God in our world.

Ouch!

Combine those two statements and you have stunning indictment of our diocese. A crisis of spiritual deafness, of lack of trust, of an inability to recognise the values of the Kingdom of God. A culture that is not favourable to vocations. Not the secular culture of the world we live in, but the culture in this diocese.

If this was your house, you would have to sell it as an "investment opportunity". Somebody would need to rip out all the floors, re-wire the electrics and re-plaster the walls. Whole thing will have to be redone. It would certainly require drastic action.

I wonder what he will do?

If I had written this, people would say I was just being a fundamentalist blogger. Can you guess who did write it?

A clue: It wasn't the Pope...

Yes, I really believe that God is still calling many to priesthood and the religious life. He is still choosing men and women to serve in a spirit of thankful self-giving and with an uncompromising desire to follow and live out the gospel. However, 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. It is from our own that priests and religious will come, from our own diocese, from our own parishes, from our own families, from our own sons and daughters. It is we who will create a culture favourable to responding to God’s call; no-one else.

First they say : "the secular and spiritual climate generated by our culture is not favourable to these vocations" and we're all thinking.. okay, everybody knows we live in a bad culture, turn on the TV and it's all sex and violence.

Then they say: "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."

Translation: The culture in our Church in this diocese of Middlesbrough generates a secular and spiritual climate which is not favourable to vocations...

Harsh.

So who wrote it?

Many thanks to Laurence England who drew my attention to this 2003 document from the Vatican. Jesus Christ, The Bearer of The Water of Life A Christian reflection on the “New Age” states...

John Paul II warns with regard to the “return of ancient gnostic ideas under the guise of the so-called New Age: We cannot delude ourselves that this will lead toward a renewal of religion. It is only a new way of practising gnosticism – that attitude of the spirit that, in the name of a profound knowledge of God, results in distorting His Word and replacing it with purely human words. Gnosticism never completely abandoned the realm of Christianity. Instead, it has always existed side by side with Christianity, sometimes taking the shape of a philosophical movement, but more often assuming the characteristics of a religion or a para-religion in distinct, if not declared, conflict with all that is essentially Christian”. An example of this can be seen in the enneagram, the nine-type tool for character analysis, which when used as a means of spiritual growth introduces an ambiguity in the doctrine and the life of the Christian faith.

[...]

Enneagram: (from the Greek ennéa = nine + gramma = sign) the name refers to a diagram composed of a circle with nine points on its circumference, connected within the circle by a triangle and a hexangle. It was originally used for divination, but has become known as the symbol for a system of personality typology consisting of nine standard character types. It became popular after the publication of Helen Palmer's book The Enneagram, but she recognises her indebtedness to the Russian esoteric thinker and practitioner G.I. Gurdjieff, the Chilean psychologist Claudio Naranjo and author Oscar Ichazo, founder of Arica. The origin of the enneagram remains shrouded in mystery, but some maintain that it comes from Sufi mysticism.

[link]

So... The Enneagram, it "introduces an ambiguity in the doctrine and the life of the Christian faith", it "is only a new way of practising gnosticism" and "We cannot delude ourselves that this will lead toward a renewal of religion."

Fortunately, here in the Diocese of Middlesbrough there are no Enneagrams, none at all, nill, nada, zilch.

Oops...

Enneagram Studies in the Narrative Tradition with Karen Webb

An Introduction to the Enneagram, led by Karen Webb on June 1st and 2nd, 2009 at St Bede’s Pastoral Centre, York

The Enneagram is a dynamic, ancient, spiritual and psychological model of humanity. It describes nine basic personality types, how they vary and interact, and the direct link between the psycho-logical and spiritual aspects of each. Giving extraordinarily accurate insight into our day-to-day behaviour, preoccupations, strengths and weaknesses and those of our friends, colleagues and lovers, it also indicates each person’s most fruitful approach to personal growth.

The outer study of the system concerns how the nine types think and feel, how they relate to each other, what will help them flourish and grow. This offers essential understanding of ourselves and our relationships; but the real power of the system lies in the inner study.

The inner study joins insight into personality with the technology of sacred tradition. The Enneagram shows ways in which emotional red flags such as jealousy or fear can become the raw material, the energy source, for liberation. The task is to transform the thoughts and emotions that define our personality into capacities such as empathy, non-attachment and love

On this introductory workshop you will:

• Discover the hidden emotional and mental concerns of each type
• Learn some of the patterns of behaviour and interaction created by these unconscious habits of perception
• Recognise your own type and those of people you know
• Understand how security as well as stress ‘changes’ your personality
• Learn to improve relationships of all kinds, by
  • seeing yourself through others’ eyes
  • understanding the different points of view of each type
  • realising your own biases and reactions towards different types
• Learn the higher attributes of each type
• Start to discover how to use your ‘negative’ patterns to fuel growth

Whether you already know something about the Enneagram, or nothing, the Narrative Tradition approach will give you a living experience of each type.

Karen Webb is an internationally known teacher and author who has taught the Enneagram since 1992

[Link]

The Enneagram has always had "dodgy" written all over it and now I see the Vatican warns against it as well. So how come there's a study day on it at the St Bede's Pastoral Centre and how come Middlesbrough Diocese website is being used to publicise it?

I thought putting the word Inspirational in front of everything was a great laugh given the way our Diocese keeps having Inspirational Study Days and Inspirational Talks by Inspirational Speakers.

But I never thought I would live to see the day they had a day which succeeded in being both Inspirational and Inspiring.

I take my hat off.

Let me be as clear as possible. I know very little about the situation in Gaza. I haven't the foggiest idea who bombed who first or who launched the most missiles or shot the most children or who has the right to what land. The whole situation is a mess. I find it impossible to be either pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian because at the end of the day both sides have their good people and complete turds.

The fact is, it's a political situation and Catholic's are free to make their own decision about which side they feel the need to support (if any). The Church shouldn't get involved with political situations - that's why the Bishops of England and Wales are very careful during election time to say things like "Don't vote for people who support abortion" without mentioning specific candidates or parties. Would you want the Pope making declarations along the lines of "Catholics should vote Labour" or "Catholics should vote Conservative"? I'm guessing you wouldn't.

That's why I think it's totally inappropriate to use the Middlesbrough Diocese website to advertise Pro-Palestinian Demonstrations and I would feel exactly the same way about pro-Israeli ones.

Bishop Terry's invitation to Young People...

Each week during Lent I will come to Hull, York and Middlesbrough. I hope to meet you there. If you are open to what the Lord is saying, life will never be the same again. I promise. Together, I want us to begin to answer Jesus' challenging question: "Who do you say I am?"

St Mark's Gospel: Who do you say I am?

The demons recognised at once who Jesus is: "We know who you are, the Holy One of God." But Jesus silenced them.

Jesus tried to show his disciples - through his teaching and his miracles. He thought they were beginning to understand. "You are the Christ," Peter said, "the Son of God". But when the going got tough, when the way lead to the cross, they ran.

What about you? Who do you say that he is?

Come and find out for yourself.

Mark's Gospel: Who do you say I am?

Mark is sure he knows who Jesus is. "The Good News about Jesus Christ, the Son of God" is the first line of his gospel. Jesus tries to show his disciples by his teaching and his miracles who he is. "You are the Christ" Peter said, "the Son of God". What about you? Who do you say he is?

[Source: Middlesbrough Catholic Voice]

I would encourage all young people in Middlesbrough Diocese to get themselves along to their nearest meeting with the Bishop.

York people need to get themselves to English Martyrs on Tuesdays in March (the 3rd, 10th, 17th and 24th) Hull people need to get themselves to The Endsleigh Centre on Wednesdays in March (the 4th, 11th, 18th and 25th) and Middlesbrough people need to get themselves to St Thomas More on Thursdays in March (5th, 12th, 19th and 26th)

This is your opportunity to find out what this religion stuff is all about.