Felled

Be very careful about the sort of lives you lead, like intelligent and not like senseless people. This may be a wicked age, but your lives should redeem it. And do not be thoughtless but recognise what is the will of the Lord. Do not drug yourselves with wine, this is simply dissipation; be filled with the Spirit. Sing the words and tunes of the psalms and hymns when you are together, and go on singing and chanting to the Lord in your hearts, so that always and everywhere you are giving thanks to God who is our Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Ephesians 5:15 - 20

Craig McLachlan, Geoffrey Rush, Rolf Harris, Don Burke, John Kerr, Peter Hollingworth, George Pell, Philip Wilson, Brian Burke, Ben Smith have all been knocked ingloriously from their perches. But there is also AMP's Craig Meller, Steve Smith and Dave Warner, Grant Hackett and Ben Cousins. For faults of commission or omission, proved or unproven, charged or uncharged, convicted, acquitted, released, these once tall poppies have been felled. They may have achieved great things, been outstanding artists, great churchmen, amazing sportsmen, high achieving politicians, soldiers or business people. But in the end their actions and inactions have condemned them.

Thank goodness no one can ‘read’ our lives when we meet them face to face. Knowing each other’s darker sides, or less flattering parts of our lives is something that will only occur with familiarity, friendship, quality time – unless it is splattered across the pages of your daily read. I truly admire those whose adolescent and young adult lives were blameless and pure. That wasn’t quite me and despite a desire to rewrite my early years, I had a good time. We were all young once. I’ll leave it at that.

It’s not a betrayal of family secrets, but alcoholism has touched my wider family with devastating effect – ruptured families, brain damage, death. It’s one of my greatest fears for all those I know who are somehow affected by alcohol. Our young people’s obsession with binge drinking is a cultural aberration I link to the 6 o’clock swill mentality introduced into Tasmanian in 1916. They appear to have no fear of the consequences, of whose lives they will impact, of what damage they might cause. It is easy to close our collective eyes, because it is our common drug.

St Paul is utterly inelegant in his criticism (Ephesians 5:18): Don’t drug yourselves with wine, this is simply dissipation. Instead, he exhorts: be filled with the Spirit. Paul cautions that we should be careful about the lives we lead – ‘like intelligent and not senseless people’. And to be intelligent means being able to make good choices, to be able to think through and be responsible for the actions we take. When we do this and discern God’s will, then despite the wickedness that permeates our world (there are names we can give to these sins), our lives are empowered with the capacity to redeem the world in which we live.

This week we remember Maximilian Mary Kolbe, a convert from Judaism and a Conventual Franciscan friar who died a martyr’s death at the hands of the Nazis in Auschwitz. How apt, then, it is that John Paul II appointed him as a patron against drug addiction, and patron of drug addicts (because he was killed with a lethal injection). Also this week is the great Marian feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Here are but two lives which have contributed to the redemption of our world, wrought for us by Christ himself.

We each have such a role; we each have our contribution to make to build up the whole. It begins with you and me, with the choices I make.

Peter Douglas

How Edward VII shut down the Blessed Sacrament procession

by Rev Mark Vickers

On the weekend of 7-9 September thousands of Catholics will gather in Liverpool for the first National Eucharistic Congress. A century before, in September 1908, thousands of Catholics from across the world had gathered in London for the 19th International Eucharistic Congress. Archbishop Francis Bourne of Westminster hoped the Congress would awaken in Catholics a renewed love for Jesus present in the Blessed Sacrament and remind the English of the time when such a belief united them with the whole of Christendom.

Bourne had been the surprise appointment to Westminster on Cardinal Vaughan’s death in 1903. He was just 42. The former Rector of the seminary at Wonersh and Bishop of Southwark, he was shy and reserved but conscientious and efficient.

People came to the Congress in their droves. Rome sent the first Papal Legate to England since Cardinal Pole 350 years earlier. Six other cardinals, 120 prelates and 2,000 priests were present. Pontifical High Mass was sung every day. An iconostasis was erected in Westminster Cathedral for the Byzantine liturgy. Talks were delivered in English and French. The Royal Albert Hall was packed out each day. On the Saturday 20,000 children processed along the Embankment. Published that day, The Tablet declared the Congress “an assured and overwhelming success”.

Sunday 13 September was to be the climax. A Blessed Sacrament procession was planned in the streets around the cathedral before an anticipated crowd of 75,000. The Church had liaised with the Home Office and the police. Imagine Bourne’s reaction when, just five days before the procession, he received a telegram from Lord Ripon, the only Catholic in the Liberal Cabinet, forwarding the Prime Minister’s request that the procession be called off as “contrary to the letter of the law and provocative to Protestant sentiment”.

The Prime Minister, H.H. Asquith, had been raised a Congregationalist in Yorkshire’s West Riding. But Balliol and the Bar had seen him adapt effortlessly to the mores of the Establishment. His was a powerful intellect; he enjoyed a reputation for tolerance. But Asquith retained two prejudices: a strong distaste for eating rabbit, and a loathing of Roman Catholicism, which he viewed as restrictive of intellectual freedom.

What was not known at the time – Buckingham Palace categorically denied interference – was the role of the King. Asquith deplored “this gang of foreign cardinals taking advantage of our hospitality to parade their idolatries through the streets of London”. Left to himself, he would have ignored them. But the monarch demanded action. Edward VII was smarting from the criticism of his recent presence at a Requiem Mass for the assassinated King of Portugal. Ultra-Protestants had compared him unfavourably to his late mother, suggesting that his eternal destiny might be otherwise than hers. And so he lent on his Ministers.

There followed a quintessentially English farce. Parliament was not in session; the Cabinet was scattered across the breadth of the realm on their country estates. Communications were difficult and inconsistent. Asquith fumed at Home Office incompetence. Bourne occupied the moral high ground, protesting that the Government was seeking to enforce a provision in the 1829 Emancipation Act against outdoor Catholic rites and ceremonies long regarded as obsolete. The Church had kept the authorities abreast of the programme.

The archbishop pointedly declared that Asquith had insulted “the Mysteries of our Religion” and the international guests assembled in London. He appealed for liberty and equality of treatment for Catholics. But he agreed to abandon the Blessed Sacrament procession – provided Asquith authorised him to say that this was at the Prime Minister’s formal request. Bourne announced the news in the Royal Albert Hall on the Saturday evening. There was prolonged hissing.

Bourne was clever. The legislation forbade outdoor Catholic ceremonial. Very well. There would be no ceremonial. The procession went ahead on the Sunday afternoon – simply without the monstrance. Some 800 altar servers, canons, abbots, bishops and archbishops preceded Cardinal Vincenzo Vannutelli, the Papal Legate, resplendent in cappa magna. Then came Archbishop Bourne and a seemingly endless line of priests and Religious. At every point they were cheered by the crowds of Catholics lining the route.

Not everyone in the procession was sanguine. Mgr William Brown knew that many Irishmen had short pokers up their sleeves, and were prepared to use them. In the event, the few Protestant protests were easily contained by the police and stewards. Nevertheless, the bishops returned with relief into the cathedral, where the Host could be processed without infringement of the law. Finally, the archbishop gave Benediction from the cathedral balcony, the crowds below erupting into a mighty shout of adoration.

Game, set and match to the Catholic Church, declared the secular press, admiring the dignified response of the archbishop who refused to be cowed by government intolerance. Unaware of the royal manoeuvrings, the press pronounced Asquith’s actions as weak and foolish, “a disservice” to Protestantism. There were political ramifications. A Liberal by-election loss in Newcastle days later was blamed on the defection of Irish voters. The Liberal Government was already unpopular with Catholics because of its attacks on faith schools.

Lord Ripon, feeling humiliated by having to deliver such a message to his co-religionists, resigned from the Cabinet. He was followed by the Home Secretary, Herbert Gladstone, whose handling of the crisis had infuriated the King. Lessons were learnt. In 1910 the legality of the consecration of Westminster Cathedral was queried. Winston Churchill, the new Home Secretary, was having none of it. He assured Bourne that the Government would render every possible assistance.

Mark Vickers is a parish priest in west London.