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Friday 21 August 2009

His Excellency, Bishop Alan Hopes, My New Hero

Why? because he can be kindly and gracious, he is able resist adding that one true but unnecessary word or two that changes virtuous admonishment into sinful attempt at shaming and scolding the one admonished.

The British Tablet ran an ugly and dishonest piece about the new(-ish) Archbishop of Westminster's attitude toward, and instructions to, the Extraordinary Form Mass and those who are attached to it.

Well, Damian Thompson reports that one of +Archbishops Nichols' auxiliaries, the aforementioned +Bishop Hope has corrected the Tablet, contradicted it, informing it that, no, his boss,
is not ‘seeking to nip potential schism in the bud’ or suggesting that the place of the Tridentine Rite is ‘necessarily marginal’ …
and that,
‘active participation’ has always been understood to be internal and external. To reduce participation to solely external signs is both a simplification and a misguided attack in the ‘culture wars’ you seek to avoid.”
Now me, I would have been tempted to write that the Tablet had launched "a misguided attack in the ‘culture wars’ YOU SAY THAT you seek to avoid."

But that would risk being seen as an accusation of not inaccuracy but dishonesty.

Wouldn't it just...

And he knows that these misguided, misspeaking people are not his enemies, they are his patients.

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