We in the Ordinariates have a special relationship with the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Many of us in England, at the behest of Bishop (now Monsignor) John Broadhurst signed a submission to its content as a way of indicating our desire to be received into the Church. And when, by the generosity of Pope Benedict, the Ordinariates were eventually set up, the Catechism of the Catholic Church had a special place in that arrangement, as the adequate and necessary statement of the faith into which we were grafted.

It comes, then, as something of a surprise to find that Pope Francis is nowhere near so committed to the Catechism as we are.

In one of his early morning sermons at the Domus Sanctae Marthae the Pope recently addressed the subject of capital punishment. It will come as no surprise that he was against it. ‘Today’, he said, ‘we say that the death penalty is inadmissible’. In so saying the Holy Father aligned himself with the emerging consensus of the post-Enlightenment West. But there are two problems.

The first is that the Church does not hold that capital punishment is ‘inadmissible’. The Catechism (2267) makes clear that ‘the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.’ It allows not much of a loophole; but it is nevertheless very far from claiming it to be ‘inadmissible’. Did Francis speak in ignorance, or out of a mischievous desire to stir controversy? We may never know.

But a second point eclipses the first. The Pope was citing capital punishment, along with slavery, as an obvious example of the way ‘we’ have improved and progressed. It is the familiar Enlightenment dialectic: ‘in former times of darkness and ignorance…but now all reasonable men agree that…’ Members of the Ordinariates will be all too familiar with that mode of argument from the tedious debates about women’s ordination.

The problem is that the Church does not and cannot proceed like that. It has its own requirements and its own means of discernment. A Church which supinely embraces the majority opinion of the liberal West is no Church at all.

It is disheartening to think that the Holy Father, even when expressing a merely personal point of view, thinks and proceeds in that uncatholic way. Disconcerting to think that the Pope, in such matters, might be little more than a very exalted Protestant.

The annual number of candidates for the diocesan priesthood in England and Wales has now fallen below forty, and is expected to remain there for some time.

What will happen next? asks the Catholic Herald.

Th answer is plain for all too see. There will be increased calls for a married priesthood and for women priests. Church establishments everywhere are incapable of analysing – and correcting – their own failures, and quick to suggest panaceas in line with current secular tastes and prejudices.

The fact that parishes will be increasingly dependent on priests from the third world will not aid them in their self-criticism.

Predictably, on the flight back from Fatima (where, according to some reports, the Holy Father commanded more devotion than the Blessed Sacrament), Pope Francis gave the assembled press the benefit of his opinions on a number of subjects.

As appears from the official transcript, little is gained from theses interviews.

The message of Our Lady of Fatima is one of peace. We must speak of peace. Even atheists want us to speak of peace.
The Pope never judges people before he has listened to them; and that principle will apply to his meeting with President Trump.
The Pope knows no more than his interlocutor about collusion between NGOs and people traffickers.
The Pope is personally disinclined to credit the Medjugorje apparitions.
Marie Collins is a very nice lady.

With all due respect to the Holy Father all this is little more than trivial.

What is significant about these media-fests, however, is not what is revealed by them, but that they take place at all. They inflame the personality cult which is already a problem with Francis, and they fuel the popular confusion between his opinions (fallible and confused as they sometimes are) and the teaching of the Magisterium.

The Pope is not an absolute monarch, whose word is law. He is more like a Supreme Court, whose judgement on the meaning of the law should be duly measured and properly circumspect, precisely because it is final.

                                             The King,             Louis,            King Louis

The Catholic Education Service (CES) acts on behalf of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference to support Catholic education. We have a strong and positive working relationship with the British and Welsh Government, sharing the aims of high academic standards for all and increased parental choice.

Imagine then the surprise and alarm among rank and file Catholics when the Service issued guidelines on homosexuality in schools much of which was lifted verbatim from publications of the homosexualist pressure group Stonewall.

Was this innocence, indolence or infiltration?

It is hard to say – though the Education Service does, from time to time make available material from other outside sources and is generally scrupulous about declaring provenance. In this case it did not.

It is observable that liberal Catholics are adopting an increasingly insolent indifference to grass-roots opinion and to the teachings of the Magisterium.

We need to be ever vigilant.

A kind correspondent has claimed that a variant of the cited limerick was used in a moving picture and applied to the American writer F Scott Fitzgerald.

I have to say that I regard this as intrinsically improbable (A Diamond as Big as the Ritz?). The form lacks Lear’s traditional incipit ‘There was a …’ and so cannot be deemed original.

Evidence suggests that the authentic version is a fine example of the humour of the English Tommy at war, and originated in the campaign of 1884 which resulted in the tragic death of General Gordon.

For a similar limerick dating from the Punjab campaign of 1849 see:

There was a young man of Darjeeling
Whose member reached up to the ceiling
When he turned on the light
He’d  a terrible fright
And a really remarkable feeling.

The College of Bishops of England and Wales has recently been conferring at Villa Palazzola, the summer retreat of the Venerable English College.

Which raises the inevitable question: what do bishops discuss during these times away?

By comparison with their Anglican colleagues, the topics must be somewhat limited. They cannot discuss doctrine, for example, since that is reserved to those way above their pay grade. Nor can they talk about ordaining women or marrying gays – the mainstay of endless Anglican episcopal gatherings at ‘secret’ venues in the Midlands and dreary sessions at the Adelphi Hotel. For Catholics these matters are settled for all time.

Probably they fall back on old favourites, like Pastoral Reorganisation (aka closing more churches); fresh initiatives in Evangelisation (aka closing more churches); and, of course, the importance of celebrating Mass facing the people.

Obviously, all this cannot be much fun.

But we hope that they return refreshed and renewed for the daunting tasks which lie ahead.

As I have always suspected, North America is a cultural desert. Already kind readers are asking for the first two lines of the limerick cited by the good archbishop.

They are, of course:

There was a young queer of Khartoum
Took a lesbian up to his room.
They spent all the night
Asking who had the right
To do what and with which and to whom.

This version is quoted in the Appendix to the 1968 Cambridge University Press Variorum Edition of Eskimo Nell. As you might have guessed.