No Further Comment

Bishop Campbell maintains there will be no further comment from His Lordship on the shutdown of Protect the Pope blog, which the Bishop states was by no means closed by him. Read it and feel free to comment here.

For me, it clarifies and reveals the particular situation of Protect the Pope in the eyes of the Bishop, but not the particular principle the Bishop expounds, that which seems to me to be, the need for unity before truth. I am not convinced that, at all times, charity is served by not naming individuals who are publicly contradicting the Infallible Magisterium of the Church. Would they need to do so, if Bishops were showing a measure of indifference to the problem or ignoring dissent?

It raises several questions, the most obvious one to me being, why would Bishops be more afraid of revelations of dissident activities in their Dioceses - activities that, at times, involve their complicity or at least indifference - than the urgent need for them to exercise their authority in their Dioceses to maintain, safeguard, teach and defend the Magisterium in its purity? In order to do such at this current time would surely involve a more muscular response from Bishops towards those who publicly espouse those doctrinal positions that are incompatible with the Catholic Faith that they are charged with the duty of teaching. It gets to a point at which those who wish to see Bishops defend that which they are commanded to teach are left wondering whether there is not just indifference to the Truth, but tacit consent in the falsehood being propagated in areas of the Church's life.

With the passing references Bishop Campbell makes to the need for unity and service of the truth in charity, it just so happens that the closure of Protect the Pope will mean less coverage of, say, the activities of ACTA in the Dioceses of England and Wales. Now that The Catholic Herald article has been updated to include the Bishop's statement on the matter, you can still comment upon the issue there.

It would appear it would be better for those who tell the truth about what's really going on in Dioceses of England and Wales to be silencde, or at least rendered silent by requests from their Ordinary, than for Bishops to take seriously their responsibilities to 'recognise dissent for what it is' and to 'teach all nations' - starting with their own Dioceses. If there is one thing St Athanasius taught us (there were many things he taught us), it is that you don't become a Saint by siding with the wrong crowd and I am pretty sure, nay convinced, that if St Athanasius was the Bishop of the Diocese of Lancaster, he would pull Deacon Nick Donnelly to one side and say:

"Well done, thou good and faithful son and servant of the Church. Let every heretic in this Diocese tremble! Give me more names of those who are defiling the purity of the One True Faith!"