UNITED STATES
Standing on My Head
September 30, 2014 by Fr. Dwight Longenecker
Over the weekend Bishop Kieran Conry, the Bishop of Arundel and Brighton resigned in disgrace after admitting not one, but two affairs with women. One of the women was married with two children.
During my time in England I first met Bishop Conry when he was in charge of the English Bishop’s media office. He was Monsignor Conry then and I couldn’t tell he was a priest as he was not wearing clericals. When I said I was hoping to be ordained as a Catholic priest he shook his head negatively and discouraged me from doing so.
Bishop Conry was part of what Damien Thompson calls “the magic circle.” This is the “inside circle” of mainstream, moderate or liberal priests and bishops who govern the Catholic Church in England and Wales.
After our conversion to the Catholic Church I spent seven years working for a small Catholic charity in England visiting parishes each weekend, and through this job I learned what life was really like in the trenches in England’s Catholic Church. It was a complex network of contacts and contacts within contacts through which, in the usual English Machiavellian way people and situations were manipulated while a polite and diplomatic facade was maintained at all times.
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