Comment: while the Church removes the sacred still more from our daily lives, the Government inserts evil into our daily lives. These are two sides of the same coin. Please spend a couple of moments to register a protest.
To the Prime Minister, to stop abortion advertising on television. (deadline 14 October 2009)
4 comments:
There's no point in signing the petition on Holydays of Obligation.
The Bishops took a great deal of advice from priests around the country. What they actually wanted to do was leave the celebrations of Epiphany, Ascension and Corpus Christi on their traditional days, but remove the obligation. This, however, Rome was not willing to allow them to do, and insisted instead that they transfer those holydays to their respective Sundays.
That's not what 'priests around the country' said at the time: many of them signed the petition to restore the Holy Days when it was first mooted.
But Rome's response, if true, is interesting. The bishops should have abandoned the project at that point, not carried on with something what would be deeply unpopular and pastorally damaging.
Why these good people shouldn't express their desire for the restoration of the Holy Days, you do not explain. Do you think the experience of the laity doesn't count? For whose benefit, after God, are these Holy Days, anyway? The clergy or the faithful?
What a large number of priests around the country reported was that attendance at weekday holydays of obligation was in steep decline, and that it therefore seemed pointless perpetuating an obligation that so many were ignoring - merely loading unnecessary guilt on already hard-pressed laity.
The Bishops therefore decided, as I have already stated, to leave the days intact but remove the obligation; but they were not permitted to do this.
A few clergy and a rather larger number of laypeople did indeed sign a petition to restore the holydays, and blamed the Bishops for the fiasco, not knowing that the blame lay with Rome rather than the Bishops. Leaving the days were they were would have enabled people to opt to go if they wished (as indeed they were already doing - except that most were opting not to go!)
Rome, having approved the changes, would apparently not permit them to be reversed.
I say again, there's no point in signing a petition now.
If you are as well informed as you claim, Cardinal, you will know the last claim is false. Canon law lays down 10 holy days of obligation; they can be cut down at the request of the bishops' conference. Rome cannot object to their restoration.
As for this 'consultation', it was clearly the kind of 'consultation' the bishops have been having over the Traditional Mass, sex education, the adoption agencies and everything else: asking the most weak-kneed of their buddies to identify the line of least resistance. And then they complain when the rest of the Church would like some real leadership!
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