UNITED KINGDOM
Christian Order
January 2002
MICHAEL McGRADE
“Theology in crisis has become a crisis of faith in God. Private judgement has been substituted for Catholic belief. Faith in the divine foundation of the Church, in many places, has vanished.
Cardinal Ratzinger
“I am left with my back to the wall. God Himself will see to the saving of His Church.”
Pope Pius VII, 1809
As Father Paul Marx, OSB, the great pro-life apostle and founder of Human Life International put it to me a few years ago, “the Church is in total chaos.” I knew it was. But when that familiar fact is confirmed by someone of his stature who has observed the Catholic crisis first-hand in close to 100 countries, it gains new resonance. Thirty-six years after the Council the Body of Christ remains deeply sick, and from Capetown to Quebec, from Christchurch to Cork, with a mere handful of noble exceptions in between, there is no cure in sight. When scandal becomes scandalously routine – so much a part of the Catholic landscape that one is astonished if a priest gets through Holy Mass without improvisation, sacrilege or heresy, or one sighs with blessed relief when a cleric gets caught with a female rather than a male – when it comes to that, you know that “crisis” has become “chaos” has become “basket case.” …
Bishop Kieran Conry
Father Summersgill, of course, can afford a ‘sticks and stones…’ response to all this, because he is on track for the episcopal heights and controversies are not about to derail him. Should he ever strike trouble, however, he need only phone Bishop Kieran Conry for reassurance. Recently installed in Cardinal Murphy O’Connor’s former diocese of Arundel and Brighton (or what is left of it after his tenure), the former Mgr. Conry was earmarked for higher things by Cardinal Hume during his time as Director of the Catholic Media Office. Despite one priest’s assessment of his time there as being “by any objective standards a disaster,” Mgr Conry became one of the sponsored ‘untouchables’ – and acted accordingly. “For a period I saw quite a bit of Conry,” a deacon confided. “He seemed to live in a secular, corporate world rather than a priestly one. I never once saw him dressed as a priest. His point of view was unfailingly liberal.” In other words, he was left to do his own thing. And if that is considered par for the priestly course nowadays, I guess one could say the same about his ‘special friendship.’ “Kieran was often seen out and about with his female friend,” a London priest informed me. “Everyone knew about it in the same way that everyone, including the bishops, knew about the homosexual relationship between Martin Pendergast [ex-Carmelite priest] and Julian Filochowski [Director of CAFOD, the bishops’ overseas aid agency].”
Several years ago, around the time of the Roddy Wright scandal, I explored how British bishops turn a blind eye to the “occasion of sin” in which a priest “keeping company” places himself, tempting fate and grave scandal [“Six Bishops and a Funeral: Why The Common Good was Dead on Arrival,” CO, Jan. 1997]. At that time, in commenting on the routine breaking of vows of chastity acknowledged by the hierarchy in a message to the Pope, Mgr (now Bishop) Arthur Roche had assured The Times that “… the bishops of England and Wales are realists.” Just how “realistic” they are I indicated by relating, among other cases, the example of the London priest well known to be living with his Pastoral Assistant, who he took along to Deanery meetings at the Bishop’s house! In that context, Mgr Conry ‘merely’ keeping regular company in such public fashion is hardly surprising. Yet even if such increasingly common ‘relationships’ are purely platonic, the point is that scandal is given, above all to those of simple and delicate conscience who are offended by it and interpret it in a bad sense. St. Joseph Cafasso, a nineteenth century version of the Cure of Ars, called this kind of scandal “the scandal of the little ones.” A priest’s life is not his own, and so the Saint exhorts him to absolutely abstain from any behaviour which might give scandal, even if caused by appearance only and the result of the ignorance of others.
One assumes that this is the case with Mgr Conry. But regardless, does it not leave the gravest questions about ecclesiastical propriety? Not to say about his prudential judgement and ability to offer wise moral leadership and counsel to others? Especially when shortly before his episcopal consecration Mass he is seen in Italy strolling hand in hand and enjoying leisurely outings with his lady friend at Palazzola, the residence on Lake Albano belonging to the English College. Again, it was the appearance of scandal that upset those who viewed the liaison, including one priest who was sufficiently disgusted to make representations to a Vatican Congregation. Word quickly spread and it is said that Church authorities may have queried Mgr Conry about the matter. Whatever the case, it is a measure of the unqualified protection afforded to Modernist cronies that not only did Mgr Conry’s less than discreet romantic entanglement not disqualify him from consideration for a bishopric in the first place, but that the Palazzola coup de grace did not even delay his elevation by a single day. It is especially shocking in light of the numerous sexual scandals in recent years which have caused such harm to the Church in general and episcopate in particular, and which, one might have thought, would have seen Rome acting swiftly to snuff out the slightest possibility of further tabloid headlines. Not on your life. Ensconced in a plum see, Bishop Conry is now fulfilling the standard expectations of his liberal patrons: Protestantising and bureaucratizing his diocese behind a welter of Modernist buzz-words about “community,” “renewal” and “change.”
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