I don't why I put myself forward for committee membership of Ecclesia Dei Ireland. I believe it was in the year 1993-94, but it could easily have been the following year. But I think I am right because I recall being off the committee two years before being re-elected (I didn't stand; and I don't think it would have looked very good for the society to have had its youngest committee member standing down at the AGM Michael Davies addressed in 1995. My reasons for stepping down was because I believed that I was wasting my time on the committee. But that is jumping ahead in the narrative.
In the course of the year, I attended monthly meetings which could be long and drawn out with very little substantive business conducted. I do remember two dioceses discussed. Cork and Ross had a particular significance as the EDI secretary Nuala Ramsay was a native of Cork. Bishop Murphy, as I have said, is alleged to have said a traditional Latin Mass would only take place in Cork over his dead body (I'm told then Archbishop Connell's reaction was to say "That can be arranged"). Eventually a compromise was reached in Cork by the SMA priest Father Thomas Higgins saying Mass daily in the SMA house in Blackrock in the early hours of the morning, but it did mean that it was possible to attend Mass in Cork.
The Kildare and Leighlin diocese was a lot more engaged, and at one point a delegation from Carlow joined us at the committee meeting. There were two petitions advancing in the diocese - one in Carlow and the other in Newbridge. I saw what was going on in Carlow. I was aware that the Newbridge petition was driven by a teenager (Thomas Murphy), but I knew little more about it. Carlow had a group of people who were apparently serious. There was a certain back and forth with the bishop, who at the time was Laurence Ryan.
I think there were dynamics in place in the diocese which militated against any entertainment of a petition. One was the presence of the National Liturgy Centre in St Patrick's College, Carlow. I am not sure to what degree St Patrick's College was functioning as a seminary at the time (in these few years St Patrick's in Carlow, St Kieran's in Kilkenny, St Peter's in Wexford and St John's in Waterford would all close their doors), but the college was the source of every liturgical, or rather non-liturgical nonsense visited on Ireland's parishes at the time. I have also heard allegations about the bishop's lack of faith but as I never knew him personally, I can't comment.
The petitioners in Carlow submitted a petition to which the bishop responded that he did not believe he could ask a priest to celebrate the traditional Latin Mass and he asked the petitioners if they could find any. The petitioners soon found two diocesan priests and two religious willing to say the Mass and gave the bishop the names. The response was that one of the religious was outside the diocese and the bishop said "I don't know of him" and the other religious was in the diocese "but he may not be always in the diocese". Of the two diocesan priests, he said that he contacted both of them and that they did not wish to say the Mass, one expressing surprise that he was even nominated.
The petitioners contacted both priests. The bishop contacted the first priest and upbraided him aggressively for having anything to do with the petitioners and left him in no doubt that no permission would be forthcoming. That priest contacted his colleague and warned him, so the other priest greeted the bishop with a denial (not a direct lie, but an effort to distance himself from the petition), but the bishop gave out to him anyway. The petitioners knew where they stood.
The efforts to get a traditional Mass in the diocese took a back seat in Carlow as the issue of re-ordering the cathedral came up the following year. Newbridge had its own problems. The bishop would not apply for an auxilliary as he was worried the Pope would impose a conservative on him and was no longer up to doing all the confirmations. He chose Newbridge as the pilot parish to have the priest confirming the children. This generated a storm in its own right and the bishop/clergy did not distinguish themselves in their efforts at communication with the flock.
No comments:
Post a Comment