Team of Professional UK Catholics Appointed to Manipulate Synod Findings

 

The Conference Catholic Bishops of England & Wales (CCBEW) Website proudly proclaims its National Synthesis Team begins its work for Synod submission to Rome.

Members of the National Synthesis Team (pictured above) are:

Miss Sarah Adams
Director of the Department for Adult Education and Evangelisation
Diocese of Clifton
(Serving Wiltshire, Avon, Somerset and Gloucestershire)

Clifton is broadly considered to have the worst bishop in the UK - Declan Lang (although there is some stiff competition). Lang is a died in the wool liberal who was the first to adopt full draconian measures post Traditiones custodes. Lang, who was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Derek Worlock, supports all things that aren't Catholic, like "gay masses". According to Wikipedia, the sum total of his educational prowess is a BA in history. Such a low educational bar leads one to conclude Lang is clearly a result of Worlock's "Magic Circle" episcopal appointments scheme. What does it take to be employed as Director of the Department for Adult Education and Evangelisation in his diocese where parishes are closing, Catholics are leaving the faith and vocations are non existent?

Dominic Belli
Director of Family Life for the Diocese of Menevia

Menevia has been a vacant see since the retirement of Rt. Reverend Thomas Burns, S.M. in July 2019. Bishop Mark O'Toole was recently appointed joint bishop of this diocese and Cardiff Archdiocese which seems like a huge job. Does the appointment of one bishop for two dioceses suggest Menevia is growing? I haven't heard anything about Dominic Belli - good or bad.

Dr Austen Ivereigh
Catholic journalist, author, commentator and biographer of Pope Francis.

Ivereigh is an extremely prejudiced commentator who has a very strange background. In 2016 he resigned as the Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor's director of public affairs following allegations by the Daily Mail. A trial in February 2008 was inconclusive, but at the retrial in January 2009 the jury unanimously found that Ivereigh had been libeled. Ivereigh has increasingly positioned himself as a Pope Francis super fan and has taken to attacking people who disagree with him on social media. You certainly couldn't say he is an objective observer!

Dr Mary McCaughey
Lecturer in Theology and Director of Studies
St Mary’s College, Oscott

Dr Mark Nash
Director of the Agency for Evangelisation and Catechesis
Southwark

Mark is a good guy. I know him. He is solid and I am pleased to see him included in this line up.

Rev. Jan Nowotnik
Director of Mission and National Ecumenical Officer
Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales

Fr Jan is on Twitter @jannowotnik I hear he is a good priest. He is very synody though and Director of Mission & National Ecumenical Officer at the Bishops’ Conference of England & Wales, which makes me nervous!

Sr Elaine Penrice fsp
Daughter of St Paul
Director of the National Office for Vocation

Rev. Canon Christopher Thomas
General Secretary
Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales

Miss Kate Wilkinson
Archdiocese of Liverpool

I don't know Kate but apparently she is a school chaplain and national president of the Young Christian Workers. We know all about Liverpool by now, don't we? See here, here and here. When you have such a dim Archbishop, so blatantly speaking out against the Church, you have to call it out!

Episcopal Oversight

Episcopal oversight of this work will be given by:

Archbishop John Wilson
Southwark (not pictured)

Wilson is currently the UK's hero bishop after actually standing up for Catholic education, a thing so rare in a bishop here, virtually no one has seen it since Bishop O'Donoghue issued Fit for Mission, Schools in 2007 and was ostracised by his fellow bishops.

Bishop Marcus Stock
Leeds (not pictured).

Stock is a bit dodgy IMO. Former General Secretary to the Bishops Conference, Stock is on the management team for the super dodgy Catholic Education Service and was in interim charge of after the resignation of Oona Stannard. He has attended ACTA meetings and is very pro homosexual clergy, having publicly contradicted Vatican directives on the non-appointment of men with a deep seated same sex attraction to the priesthood and ordaining some questionable clergy.

The main take away is that these are virtually all professional Catholics who earn a living working in the Church. This leads me to wonder, does this somewhat defeat the purported aims of the synod? Perhaps cynically, it leads me to think that this is a process which will see a manipulation of the information presented to portray a certain mindset? Certainly anyone who follows the adventures of Austen Ivereigh on social media can't doubt he will be a forceful, coercive voice for a particular agenda.

Irrespective of the way the information will be framed, the reports I am hearing leave little doubt that the result of the consultation will be ill-formed Catholics seeking greater liberalism.

Another question that arises looking at the cohort is one of demographics. What of our Malayali Catholics? Our Fillipino Catholics? Our African Catholics? Married women? Hard to look at this and say it is anything new really!

What couldn't be clearer is that Pope Francis is the end of a line of clerics who have sought to obfuscate and confuse the faithful rather than edify and clarify. His intentions may be well meaning, but the practice is a total disaster. To continue to refer deferentially to a papacy which is so obviously problematic can only serve to increasingly damage the credibility of the Catholic Church.