The Tablet has been sternly corrected by Bishop Alan Hopes, auxiliary of Westminster diocese, for an editorial a couple of weeks ago in which it suggested that Archbishop Vincent Nichols was trying to control supporters of the traditional Latin Mass in order to relegate them to a “necessarily marginal” place. As Will Heaven said at the time, the Tablet grossly misrepresented the Archbishop’s message to a training conference for priests learning to say the older form of the Roman Rite.
And now Bishop Hopes has responded on his boss’s behalf, in a letter published in this week’s issue.
He writes:
[The Archbishop] is not ‘seeking to nip potential schism in the bud’ or suggesting that the place of the Tridentine Rite is ‘necessarily marginal’ …
And, regarding the Tablet’s implication that the Archbishop shares its view that worshippers at the older Mass do not participate:
… ‘active participation’ has always been understood to be internal and external. To reduce participation to solely external signs is both a simplification and a misguided attack in the ‘culture wars’ you seek to avoid.”
It’s no secret that the Tablet didn’t want Vincent Nichols to become Archbishop of Westminster.
Now that he’s got the job, it’s continuing to pick fights and play juvenile tricks on him.
Way to go, Ma.
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