Tuesday, December 2, 2008

UK Bishops Begin Capitulation of Catholic Schools

edit: I originally titled this: "Catholic Bishops of England Make Arrangements to Ease Cession of their Schools to Muslims in Coming Decades"

Or, as the Daily Mail reports: Muslim prayer rooms should be opened in Catholic schools, say church leaders Why did I title my post the way I did? Because Europe's native population is dwindling and being replaced by Muslims and because England in particular is making way for Islamic Sharia Law to hold court in their country. Apparently the English don't think that their own culture is worthwhile enough to reproduce or to hold on to what is authentically Christian, Catholic, or even English. 100 years down the road, will America even know the UK?

Some English Bishops seem to be preparing for the rising Muslim population in their country to one day inherit their Catholic school system's facilities. Of course I'm being facetious there. But if the Telegraph's Damian Thompson is to be believed, the English Bishops are absolutely a mess. To me, it seems like many of them have no desire to shepherd their flock or see them bear enough fruit (spiritually or otherwise) to engender a subsequent generation. Either that, or they're all campaigning to instead become the next Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury.

In the article, Daphne McLeod puts it well when she says, "If Muslim parents choose a Catholic school then they accept that it is going to be a Catholic school and there will not be facilities for ritual cleansing and prayer rooms" and "I don't think the bishops should go looking for problems. Where will it stop?" Although the news made Muslim parents of Catholic-schooled children "delighted", I think it really exposes the incorrect focus of Church leaders in a country (like ours) that has largely failed to inculcate the culture (or the faith) of Catholicism to its children, perhaps for decades.

Pope Benedict XVI is deciding on a successor to shepherd the Catholic Archdiocese of Westminster, whose bishop has served as a sort of leader for the rest of the English Bishops since some point after the time Catholic hierarchy were allowed back into England. Please pray, and pray hard that Benedict will once again give faithful Catholics cause to cheer!

It's so sad that the bishops of a country that is known for St. Thomas More (!) and St. Edmund Campion bow down so reverently to the lukewarm current of public pressure. But I should really give those bishops more credit for their actions. After all, it takes their own "drive" to take the Catholic Church in England, given its history and martyrs, and make it less Catholic than "High Church" Anglicanism.