Pope will visit Edinburgh
and Glasgow on UK trip
by Alison Campsie
January 28, 2010
The Pope is due to visit Scotland for one day as part of a four-day trip to the UK, The Herald understands.
Pope Benedict XVI is expected to attend events in both Edinburgh and Glasgow on the historic trip, during his visit to Britain between September 16 and 19.
A special celebration is to be held in honour of Pope Benedict XVI at Glasgow Green, with plans for Edinburgh yet to be announced.
The visit has come about following a personal invitation from Prime Minister Gordon Brown, with the Pope due to mark the beatification of John Henry Newman, the most celebrated Anglican convert to Roman Catholicism .
A spokesman for the Catholic Church in Glasgow said: “There has been no confirmation yet of the dates of the Papal visit. There is great expectation and excitement but we can’t make any concrete plans until the dates and details are confirmed.
“Since it will be a state visit, the local Church has less direct involvement in the planning stage. We can only really begin to put plans in place when the UK Government, Buckingham Palace and the Holy See finalise the timing.”
A spokesman for the Church in Scotland said: “It is our expectation and our hope that the Pope will come later this year but we still await official confirmation.”
Benedict’s predecessor, Pope John Paul II, made a highly successful and popular visit to Scotland in 1982 when he celebrated mass in Bellahouston Park in Glasgow.
Benedict’s visit is expected to be lower key given his age and health. He will be
84 in April.
[83!]
The prospect of the visit has provoked a debate in the Catholic Church in Scotland over the way Mass is celebrated.
Pope Benedict has
championed a return to the Tridentine, or Latin, Mass [Obviously he does not! He has simply allowed the traditional Mass to be celebrated as validly as it was in the past, without affecting the New Mass in any way. In fact, he himself continues to say all his public Masses in the Novus Ordo! Loose reporting like this only arouses unnecessary passions!] and supporters in Scotland believe his stance can further their cause in the face of what some believe is a reluctance to do so on the part of
some bishops, who are said to favour a more informal form of worship.
Pope Benedict has been a student of the writings of Cardinal Newman since he was a young seminarian.
One week earlier, the same newspaper published a very biased (and also rather misinformed) commentary - the bias is evident from the very title - on Pope Benedict XVI's visit, published before there had been any news of a Scottish 'leg' to his four-day UK trip, other than a visit to Queen Elizabeth in Balmoral.
In addition, the entire article is colored by a glowing account of John Paul II's visit in 1982, inevitably history-making because it was the first papal visit to the United Kingdom since Henry VIII broke off from the Roman Catholic Church to set up his own Church of England.
Additionally, non-Catholics always under-estimate the unique drawing power and fascination of a Pope - any Pope, I dare say - to Catholics. If any of the Popes before Paul VI had had the benefit of air travel, they would have been welcomed anywhere they went with as much fervor.
Similarly - and without taking anything away from John Paul II's obvious 'star power', if you will - the reception for him in all the 107 countries he visited would have been no less if he had been someone as reserved as Paul VI - or as the media would say 'less charismatic' - if only because in all but a handful of those countries that had been visited by Paul VI, he was the first Pope ever to visit.
And the overwhelming reception that Benedict XVI has received in all the Christian countries he has visited so far have been no less than the reception that Catholics gave to John Paul II.
At the very least, the following commentary is premature, and will, I believe, prove to be entirely rash and dead wrong![As wrong as ]the French media were in predicting few would turn out to see Benedict XVI!
To be fair, much of the article deals with the apathy of the Socttish bishops themselves, because apparently, they are completely out of step with the Holy Father, preferring to 'homogenize' the Catholic religion with Protestant practices. I certainly hope the Scottish Catholics will prove to have more 'good faith' than their bishops do, who probably deserve more prayers even than their faithful!
Sharp contrast with the past
as Pope’s visit inspires apathy
by Rosemary Goring
January 16, 2010
What a difference a new century makes. The first and last time a Pope visited Scotland, in 1982, the build-up was tremendous, and the day itself went down as one of the defining moments of modern Scottish history.
Even die-hard Protestants were wooed by the thrill of this unprecedented visit, and watched the coverage of that day’s events with pride. In what was widely and correctly perceived as an age increasingly dominated by a secular agenda, here was Christianity taking centre stage: gloriously, joyfully, and prayerfully.
For the Catholic community in Scotland, despite the occasional and predictable outburst of anti-Catholic feeling, Pope John Paul II’s trip was an unforgettable and emotional meeting of Pontiff and people.
Few who were there will forget the touchingly personal note John Paul II struck with his Scottish flock. One suspects that the cases of heatstroke dealt with by the first aid outposts throughout Bellahouston Park might have had as much to do with the excitement of seeing the Pope in person as with the sun’s glare.
Before that visit, some were no doubt anxious that such a huge public celebration of Catholicism would inflame sectarian grudges, which are notoriously easily triggered. Yet, as the event itself demonstrated, the benefits of the day far outweighed a few complaints.
Today, however, with society more keen than ever to stamp out religious bigotry of all kinds, it is possible that a desire to keep in step with a multi-faith Scotland might lie behind the alleged apathy of Scottish Catholic bishops over Pope Benedict XVI’s visit later this year.
Already the reception for this behind-the-scenes visit has been soured by a reported lassitude on the part of the Scottish Catholic hierarchy, whose methods of liturgy and pastoral care are very different from those Pope Benedict would like to see practised.
The conceptual gulf between the Scottish Catholic Church and the Vatican that this outlook suggests is perhaps not wholly surprising.
Benedict, as a retro, revivalist Pope, is keen to reintroduce a degree of formality – and Latin – to the celebration of Mass, and to dealings between priest and parish.
His ambitions are those of a first-rate intellectual who grew up well before Vatican II, and its populist-minded changes.
Before his elevation to the papacy, Joseph Ratzinger was a renowned academic, a professor of theology who had written a vast number of books. Born in Bavaria in 1927, he was the oldest papal
appointment [Madame, Popes are elected, not appointed!] since the 18th-century Pope Clement XII.
Theologically conservative, he has been a staunch supporter of bringing back the Tridentine, or Latin Mass. His papacy so far has shown him as a man of strong pastoral sensibility, but he has also courted controversy. On one occasion he offended the Islamic community with what were seen as derogatory remarks about their beliefs, and
the revelation that as a teenager he had been a member of the Hitler Youth alco caused concern.
[Ignorance, ignorance! Not a revelation at all! It was known about him throughout his career and he wrote about it in his memoir.]
If there truly is scepticism over his reforms among the bishopry, this may stem from the inherent resistance of priests working daily in the complex and far from easy setting of modern Scotland.
While no faith wants to lose its distinctiveness, ecumenism is seen by many across the religious spectrum as the holy grail, a civilised way to ease tensions, rather than entrench them.
[But who ever said that ecumenism meant syncretism - diluting one's own faith and practice of it to accommodate to others? And why must it be the Catholics who have to adapt to others, not the others to us? No, let us keep our practices and let them keep theirs.
Summorum Pontificum keeps alive the centuries-old rite that has distinguished the Church from its Protestant offshoots, in the admirable way that the Orthodox Churches have kept their traditional rites, without any question whatsoever of wishing to replace or dilute them. Besides, this article - and the problematic Scottish bishops - completely ignore that High Anglicanism itself has been distinguished by upholding a traditional rite that is far closer to the traditional Roman rite than the Novus Ordo is.]
Given the liberal, laid-back tone of many services, the argument seems to be that the more low-key the rituals and pomp associated with the Catholic Church, the more widely the Christian message is likely to be heard and sought.
[A fallacy that has been demonstrated daily since Vatican II - when Church attendance everywhere started dropping precipitously and has never quite recovered.]
In Italy, or indeed any predominantly Catholic country, a shift towards greater ceremony is more easily accepted, one presumes, than in countries on the margins of the faith, where the Church is under perpetual, corrosive assault from apathy or disbelief.
To be told what’s best for their parishes, when they know first-hand what works, might well be galling for Scottish Catholic leaders.
The restricted nature of Pope Benedict’s visit to Scotland indicates that the religious fervour that made 1982 so remarkable may now be deemed more trouble than it is worth.
Either that, or it indicates the loss of fervour itself.
Officials worry about the costs
of the Pope's visit to the UK
By Ed West
29 January 2010
Church officials have expressed concern about whether the faithful will have to pay a significant proportion of the cost of Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Britain.
The Government is expected to cover the most significant expenses, such as security, as it was Gordon Brown who invited the Pope to visit in February last year. But Church and Government officials are currently negotiating how other costs will be apportioned.
Anxiety will be increased by the memory of John Paul II's visit in 1982, which
plunged the Catholic Church in England and Wales deep into debt.
[Is this fact?]
It will be the first papal trip to Britain since John Paul II's visit. It is expected to begin on September 16 and the highlight will be the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman on Sunday, September 19, which the Pope will personally preside over.
It is also expected that he will address MPs and peers at Westminster Hall, at the very spot where Sir Thomas More was sentenced in 1535.
The Church may be able to fund part of the trip with merchandising rights, broadcasting rights, big private donors or collections.
One Church official, who wanted to remain anonymous, said: "We are now in a situation where we don't know who's paying for it. It's not in the Government Budget [and] is probably going to cost the Church about £3m to £6m."
Other Church figures insisted the negotiations between the Government, the local Church and the Holy See were progressing smoothly. A Government spokesman said he would not disclose any details about the trip until it had been officially announced.
Why were the Bishops of England and Wales
missing at Monday's Christian Unity Vespers?
Damian Thompson and his readers are wondering why the Archbishop of Westminster, Mons. Vincent Nichols, and his fellow bishops from the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England Wales were conspicuously absent from the Vespers at St. Paul outside the Walls last Monday. afternoon.
The bishops are in Rome on ad limina visit, as their website has duly memorialized in the above 'class picture'.
The Pope met with Mons. Nichols and his auxiliaries in the first group on Monday morning, and met the second group this morning.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 06/02/2010 15:46]