Bishop Conry rejects the teaching of the Church

Comment: in a staggering interview with the Catholic Herald, Bishop Kieran Conry of Arundel and Brighton lays out his stall.

-Talking to young people about sin and salvation is a bad idea because they don't understand it (and whose fault is that?)

-Frequent confession is a bad idea because people doing it don't instantly shed their habitual sins (so how should they tackle habitual sin?)

-A group asking for the traditional Mass must be a 'sizeable group in a parish', and should not go regularly to a Sunday traditional Mass (in flagrant contradiction to the authoritative interpretations of the Motu Proprio by Rome - and indeed the plain meaning of the text)

-The teaching of Humanae Vitae on contraception is not infallible.

Developing the last point, Bishop Konry tells us that the only infallible statement in Catholic teaching is the creed (he doesn't say which one). This is the clearest contradiction of Church teaching in the interview: it dismisses the power of General Councils of the Church to teach infallibly (when they issue 'anathemas', condemned statements), as well as the infallibility of the Pope, exercised for example in proclaiming the Immaculate Conception in 1854 and the Assumption of Our Lady in 1955. See the Catholic Encyclopedia on Inffallibity.

The whole thing is breathtaking. Here are some gems:

On preaching the gospel to young people:

"You can't talk to young people about salvation. What's salvation? What does salvation mean? My eternal soul? You can only talk to young people in young people's language, really. And if you're going to talk to them about salvation, the first thing they will understand is saving the planet."

On the Traditional Mass:

"I've had two requests, one from a guy in Horsham who said 'can we have the 1962 Latin Mass in Horsham?' And I said according to the terms of Summorum pontificum you can't because first of all it can't become a regular Sunday Mass, and there must be a request from a 'stable group of people'.

"Well, we can't translate the Latin accurately, 'stable' means a sizeable group in a parish, it doesn't mean you get 50 people from all over Surrey to come together in Redhill and say 'we're a stable group in Redhill' - no. It's not the site, it's where they come from. You can't come to gather at a place and say 'we're a stable group'."

...the Pope will say: 'Have it, but not as part of your standard Sunday repertoire.'"

On confession:

Is it a good idea to go to Confession regularly? "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."

On Humanae Vitae:

But is the teaching itself wrong? "It could be. It's not an infallible teaching. Clearly the basic Creed formula, what the Church teaches about the sacraments is infallible but there's only been one strictly infallible statement."

So in a sense it's a matter of opinion? "Well, it's... It is."

See some comments on the liturgical aspects of the interview from Fr Z here.