De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

  At 78, Cardinal Nichols has been in post almost 3 years past his retirement date now. Over the ten years of this pontificate, Pope Francis has built a reputation for accepting the resignation of orthodox prelates immediately while letting friendly prelates linger on. (See this for example : a resignation accepted a mere month after being 75 years old is clearly meant to give a signal to other Bishops). Nichols was appointed a member of the Congregation for Bishops on 16 December 2013 by Pope Francis. On 19 February 2014 he was appointed a member of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches. So he appears to get on quite well with the Pope. Nichols was Archbishop of Birmingham before being appointed Archbishop of Westminster by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009. It was reported that Benedict XVI personally selected Nichols for the post after the Congregation for Bishops failed to reach a consensus, however he was passed over for the Cardinalate, reportedly because of his continued suppor...

The leaked exchange of letters between Vincent Cardinal Nichols and Archbishop Arthur Roche is very unusual and therefore most interesting. I know various UK clergy who claim they had copies at least a week before they were published, indeed Dr. Joseph Shaw pointed out at 1P5 that:  "These two letters have been going around by email for some time, and it was inevitable that they would be published" I have heard from Journalists who knew of the existence of these letters, although they were not cleared to go public by their sources, then Gloria TV get hold of the exclusive ! Gloria TV! Why not give it to Damian Thompson or The Tablet or The Pillar ? Unless you wanted to create distance? Can you remember the last time some private correspondence between the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster and the Vatican was made public? Neither can I. So who leaked it? Does it demonstrate a growing exasperation with the direction of the Bergoglian papacy? Was it some Vatican or CDW offic...

  As always these days there is a lot going on in the Church. Not much of it any good. Although this is a good thing announced by the Cardinal yesterday. At the weekend there was an interesting breach in protocol when the Catholic website 1P5 posted an exchange of letters between the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols and the Prefect for the Congregation on Divine Worship and former bishop of Leeds in the UK, Arthur Roche. I had to wonder who leaked it and what such an unusual leak might mean? Probably that quite a number of clergy are frustrated and upset by Traditiones custodes and what it means for the Church. Clergy here have told me that Roche''s tenure as bishop of Leeds was not a happy one and he was "promoted" to Rome to get him out of the way — apparently this is not an uncommon phenomenon, however counter-intuitive it may appear. However "Uncle Arthur" as he is often called, is ambitious and the perfect individual to implement Po...