Friday, December 19, 2008

Church teaching on birth control could be wrong, says English Catholic bishop

The über-liberal Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, Kieran Conry, has given an astonishingly frank interview to Andrew M Brown of The Catholic Herald.

One well-known priest's reaction: "I'm still picking up my jaw off the floor."

Here's a list of the things Bishop Conry says in the interview:

1. The Church's teaching on birth control "could be wrong" and is not infallible. Asked if Humanae Vitae was a mistake, he says: "I don't know."

2. "You can't talk to young people about salvation," says the bishop, because that concept means nothing to them. Instead, talk in their language - for example, about saving the planet.

3. Asked if frequent confession is a a good idea, he replies: "No, because my own experience when we had Confession every day at St Chad's Cathedral in Birmingham was that regular penitents came back with exactly the same words week after week. So there you would say, actually, there is no conversion taking place."

4. He insists that Summorum Pontificum is not intended to provide ordinary Sunday Tridentine Masses. He paraphrases the Pope as saying: "Have it [the traditional Mass] but not as part of your standard Sunday repertoire."

These are shocking things for a bishop to say. I've thought for a long time that Kieran Conry, a thoroughly decent and compassionate man, should resign as Bishop of Arundel and Brighton: he is too partisan, too out of sympathy with aspects of the Magisterium, and his misrepresentation of Summorum Pontificum is outrageous.

And yet, at least he has the guts to speak his mind.

Several leading bishops of England and Wales share these views; but surreptitiously.

They are too cowardly to reveal what they really think, except in semi-private gatherings of Magic Circle hangers-on.

Now +Kieran has let the cat out of the bag.

Let's see what happens next.
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(Source: TTCK)