Anglo-Catholics have one important pastoral opportunity that Roman Catholics don’t
Ordinariate clergy being ordained earlier this year. CNS photo/Marcin Mazur, Bishops' Conference of England and Wales) |
From the Catholic Herald (UK)
By William Oddie
From time to time, one blog leads on to another. Here’s one which leads on from two of my recent efforts. Firstly, from my recent post pointing out that the secular press, in their obituaries of Sir Jimmy Savile, totally ignored what he himself would have said was one of the most important features of his life, his Catholic faith. I mentioned in some sorrow among these a paper I first came across some 50 years ago, the Irish Independent. Back in those days, it was a very definitely Catholic paper, and would certainly have mentioned Jimmy Savile’s regular attendance at Mass during the week. “Truly”, I commented, “since the long-ago days when the Irish Independent published a series of booklets on the Catholic faith for children (my favourite — one of which I remember vividly since I much later based a children’s sermon on it in my days as a clergyman, to the fury of a very Protestant churchwarden—was entitled “Tales of the Blessed Sacrament”) there has been a great falling away from that faith, which makes me very sad indeed.”