www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Archbishop Ireland lives again

Please see this article, written on Rocco Palmo's blog "Whispers in the Loggia" about Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor's "Christmas message" to the growing Polish immigrant community in England.

"Days after new stats reported that, aided by a significant influx of Eastern Europeans, Catholic church attendance in Britain had surpassed that of the nation's Anglicans, the primate of England and Wales has brought his Tony Blair Conversion Honeymoon to a screeching halt by accusing the Polish newcomers of "creating a separate church":

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster, urged the Polish community to do more to learn English and integrate into local parishes, claiming the Catholic Church in the UK was in danger of dividing along ethnic lines as the number of Polish-speaking churches rose..."

Please use the link below to see the entire commentary:

http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/2007/12/cormac-pushes-poles.html

Panie zmiluj sie! Oops! I mean: Lord have mercy! Sorry your Eminence.

John K

Well - in a way I can understand it . Up here in civilisation [ ] we do have a huge community of Poles. In Aberdeen [ I think ] they are now publishing a newspaper in Polish.

On Sundays , while I am on the bus after DL heading to the coach station to go back to Glasgow, I pass 4 small Polish food shops [ as well as a largish chinese supermarket ] and this is in a 10 min journey

My own Community in Edinburgh has Poles as well.

Something my SF said to me a while ago does , I think apply here , no matter how well one learns a language and can speak it , hearing the Scriptural readings in Church in any language but the one that is your Mother tongue , is difficult - you do lose some of the nuances of the language.

I really don't think he should be singling out the Polish incomers this way - the same comments can be applied to every immigrant community of any Faith.

Plus ca change, plus le meme chose! (Sorry; this e-mail program will not do french diacritical marks).

I do wish that Cormac Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor would change his name. I can assure you that pastoral care for Irish-speakers in his bailiwick is virtually non-existent.

Failing that, someone should ask him to his face if it would not be better to provide pastoral care to the Polish contingent rather than risk a significant body of them deciding to telephone Scranton.

His predecessor did everything possible to block Anglicans who wished to become Catholic while maintaining a common identity of their own - in the presence and earshot of a good friend (who is now a Greek-Catholic priest) Cardinal Hume pronounced that "we have too many of these Uniate Churches already".

Fr. Serge

Fr Serge

You should be able to get the correct diacriticals

go to your menu bar and click on the wee flag there . On the pull down menu go to Show Character Palette.

Make sure that the View option is on All Characters and below that By Category should be highlighted.

Then go to European Scripts click on the wee arrow and go down to Latin and lo and behold you will get all the letters and accents etc you could possibly want.

Highlight the one you want in the bigger window - it will them appear in the box on the lower right click again on the one you want in the right hand box and then click on insert and providing that your cursur in the document you were writing is in the right place the letter together with the mark you want will appear.

It's slow - but it gets there

Hope this helps

I can understand the Cardinal completely.
We are a Catholic Church NOT an ethnic one.
And there does tend to be inclinations to divisions and it is his duty to speak out against this. I dont think he was saying that Polish people did not have the right to pastoral care.
Stephanos I

Lest we have complaints about untranslated posts, I'll provide an English translation of Fr Serge's French: "The more things change, the more they stay the same!"

Fr David Straut

well for what it's worth

I think that the Church's job is not primarily to preserve any particular language or culture - but rather to preach the Gospel in whatever language the people happened to use.

of course, in this case, I (not that I am anybody esp. not the Latin primate of England & Wales), I am thinking that the UK Church is not there to protect the English language or culture, but to preach the Gospel in the language of the people, a significant number of whom, apparently, are polish speakers.

Herb.

btw - are there any Welsh language Latin Catholic parishes under the Archbishop's pallium?

Hmmmm - now there is a thought Welsh speaking Latin Catholics.

I suppose it's possible - the Welsh do use their language a lot - but - Wales is mainly [ I think ] Protestant most of the great welsh male voice choirs come from the valleys - mining areas and these were very much the "Chapel going communities "

There are of course Scots Gaelic speaking parishes in the Diocese of Argyll and the Isles

I agree Father, the church transcends all culture--BUT it takes at least one generation for a sub-culture to become integrated into their new country and it's language. They need Polish language ministry AND want it. If they're not getting fed at English Masses, what is the problem? I don't think that we need another PNCC-like schism. If there are so many Poles immigrating to England, it's not their fault if they don't want to attend English language services they cannot understand. I see many RC parishes around here that have Spanish "sub-parishes" and no one seems to be saying anything like this to them. Where is pastoral sensitivity?

Here's a link to another blog speaking to this:

http://thenewliturgicalmovement.blogspot.com/2007/12/cardinal-cormac-murphy-oconnor.html

You would think that with the number of English people in the pews in Catholic churches in the U.K., His Eminence would be incredibly grateful to the Poles for revitalizing his dying church. Instead his xenophobic comments serve only to cause grave scandal to many of the faithful Poles. One woman said she felt "spritiually raped" by his despicable commentary.

I, for one, think it's all part of a bigger agenda, one which the liberal English hierarchy has made no attempt to disguise: these foreign priests and faithful are too orthodox, and are in desperate need of brainwashing. To quote one English Catholic priest on how the Poles and others teach the True Faith: "that's not how we do things here." It certainly isn't, and the puny numbers speak to that! The hierarchy has actually created classes and seminars to re-orient, if one can call it that, these foreign priests and how they impart the Faith.

You can't make this stuff up! It makes one's stomach turn. One can only find solace in His Eminence's age (75; time for a replacement) and the ever-increasing numbers of orthodox Catholics via immigration in the U.K. Here's to hoping and praying they don't drink the Kool-Aid.

Alexis, continually disheartened by never surprised by much of the hierarchy

Yes, there are Welsh-speaking Catholic communities in Wales (most of them rather small, but they represent hope).

"Catholic" and "ethnic" are not mutually exclusive terms, any more than "Orthodox" and "ethnic" are mutually exclusive terms. The Lord Jesus Christ ordered us to "preach the Gospel to all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit".

There is no evangelical or ecclesiastical mandate to attempt to force other nations into the Anglo-Yankee Cream of Wheat.


Incidentally, the word pravoslavnyj occurs in the official Slovak translation of the Divine Liturgy in the same places where it occurs in the official Church-Slavonic edition.

Fr. Serge

In my part of the world the county is 10% Spanish speaking. I THINK I know of one Catholic Church that takes liturgy in Spanish... I think. I true tragedy.

And that is where they go, if not the Iglesis de Dios...

So the idea that it is too difficult to have a handful of Polish parishes... Well, Excellency, write to your counter-part in Poland (where one in four European seminarians can be found) and ask for some priests, and set up some parishes. The Anglicans may even have some for sale... They have sold at least two to the Muslims.

The ethnic card is getting played to trump the orthodox card here. Too many of "Those people" with their rosaries and their long lines for confession and their pious practices just doesn't fit in with modern notions of "Today's Brit Catholic"

Could this by why to date NO Anglican ministers who have applied for ordination and incardination in some diocese have been accepted??? I seem to recall reading that Liverpool had manifold applicants. Not ONE was accepted.

This is all a bunch of @#$% - pardon my French.

The only reason a bevy of Anglicans and flock of Poles would scare the hierarchy of a struggling shrinking church is that they don't fit in with their agenda.

May the agendists all convert or retire soon.

This is why we call him Archbishop Ireland ?

Rocco is incorrect in one respect. We Austrians & Germans (I am half) were treated just as poorly as the other groups, except that we have been here longer so no one but the Irish remember.

Bland Irish Catholicism dominates to this day. If we Germans had won the culture war: a.) we would still have Mozart-style music in church, b.) we would still have processions and many other externals of the faith in regular practice, c.) Deutsche Singmesse would not be an interesting historical peculiarity, d.) German would still be spoken and taught in the schools, e.) the Ukrainians would not have been treated so poorly, f.) it would not be uncommon in a Roman Catholic parish to hear people singing in four-part harmony, and the list could go on.

Check out J.P. Dolan's The Immigrant Church: New York's Irish & German Catholics 1815-1865.

You wish to hear Mozart's music in Church? Don't blame the Irish for the Cream of Wheat, come to Ireland - at the Pro-Cathedral here in Dublin the Coronation Mass was done for Midnight at Christmas and again Christmas morning.

Fr. Serge