Dear Media Liberals: One Priest Breaking His Vows Is Not a Reason to Rewrite Catholicism

By Tim Stanley
Thr Telegraph
September 30, 2014

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100288197/dear-media-liberals-one-priest-breaking-his-vows-is-not-a-reason-to-rewrite-catholicism/

The Bishop of Arundel stood down at the weekend after admitting he had broken his vows of celibacy (Photo: IAN JONES).

Compare and contrast two stories of men with personal failings. A Catholic bishop admits to breaking his vows, resigns and everyone says it’s indicative of the madness of Catholic theology. A Tory MP finds himself in a sexting scandal, resigns and no one (no one) says that it’s indicative of the madness of Conservatism. Why the difference? Because a lot of the people writing about the bishop’s errors don’t like Catholic teaching and will use any excuse they get to prove its “flaws”.

The bishop I’m writing about is, of course, Bishop Kieran Conry, who has admitted to an affair and has quit his post. It’s an old story that goes back centuries – priest makes vows, is tempted, breaks those vows, resigns. No more to it than that. Although Andrew Brown in The Guardian seems to imagine that it’s going to spark a second Reformation. Traditionalists, he claims, were “jubilant at his resignation” (evidence for this is scant: even the waspish Damian Thompson has been admirably charitable) while liberals will be deeply upset. Brown seems to imply (and his logic is bizarre) that a) this will kick off a debate about celibacy and birth control (?!) and b) conservatives have been preparing for said debate by silencing liberals:

These are particularly neuralgic matters for the Catholic church in Britain at the moment, as one of the country’s leading liberal theologians, Prof Tina Beattie, has just been banned from lecturing in church premises in Scotland after an intervention from Rome. The denunciation of supposed heretics has been a feature of the Catholic civil wars in North America for decades now, and it appears to be spreading to this country.

If only that was true, Andrew! After all, isn’t part of the job of the priesthood to correct heretical errors and halt false teaching? Beattie and the liberals want a reckless debate about sex and Catholicism that goes way beyond the celibacy issue – and it’s a conversation that the Church neither needs nor wants. We Catholics believe in an inerrant God whose agenda for humanity is laid out in our Catechism. The Catechism cannot be rewritten and any Catholic interested in doing so is gravely wrong. They should reconcile themselves to the Truth, tout de suite.

Anyway, all of this is by-the-by because – and this is the key point – the Conry scandal says nothing about church politics or theology. It’s about one man who has admitted he did wrong. Crucially, that wrong might have not only involved breaking his own vows: a husband claims that Conry contributed to the breakdown of his marriage and even alleges that the Church did not do enough to stop this happening. To ask “would this have happened if Conry was married?” is to engage in a hypothetical question that simply can never be answered. News flash to Church reformers: married men commit adultery. Some of them even send photos of themselves to young women over social media. Men are men, and men are prone to do silly, silly things. Let’s not tear up Church teaching just because one bishop has admitted that he is simply a man. Let’s show him love instead.

For the Catholic position on sin is not, as the liberals out there in the media wilderness insist, only to condemn but also to forgive. Fr Lucie-Smith has written a beautiful blog about Conry that concludes:

Let us all, not just Bishop Kieran, consider our position. Here were are, weak human beings, cast onto this earth, awash on a sea of troubles, and our behaviour is often incoherent, and often downright sinful. How we make a mess of things! Our life is a slow-moving train wreck. But, and it is a mighty but, in the midst of despair and trouble, there is hope. A bright light shines, and it is the light of Christ, who calls us to redemption. And if that light is not enough, or is too strong for our weak eyes, there is another light, that of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who will, if we let her, guide us to her Son.

Fine words that Augustine himself could not improve upon. My prayers are with the Bishop.