Thursday, January 01, 2015

More on the female Pastoral Administrator

The story I reported here a few days ago has been reported in the Tablet (30th December), with some additional commentary from one of the local priests. Read it and weep.

Fr Paul Hardy said Sr Yvonne Pilarski, whose official title is “pastoral administrator” of Christ the King Church in Milton Keynes, had been universally accepted by the people.

“I’ve seen the congregation treating her exactly as if she was their parish priest,” he said. “They’ve taken it very well – she is obviously their resident person and that’s how she’s treated. If she wants something to happen, it happens.”

Sr Yvonne, who also administers the parish of St Bede’s in Newport Pagnall, does all the administration work connected with her parishes, as well as any pastoral care that does not require a priest, such as taking Communion to the sick or visiting the elderly. “She is very much the boss,” said Fr Hardy. “She’s a very good parish priest – she has that feminine quality that parish priests don’t have.”

Fr Hardy said he thought Bishop Peter Doyle of Northampton, who appointed Sr Yvonne to her new role in the autumn, had been very courageous, adding: “We can’t replace priests who die or retire any more, and this is a way forward.”

'She is a very good parish priest'. Yup, 'this is a way forward', said the lemming to the lamppost...

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11 comments:

  1. Perhaps the way a message is spun even the awful can sound positive. When hungry, one will accept anything to eat but can dream of chateaubriand all the same!

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  2. "Defeatism" in the Church of Francis?

    Paraphrasing Rahm Emanuel, can't allow a perfectly good crisis to go to waste.

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  3. I see that on the Milton Keynes North Pastoral Area the nun in question does, indeed, appear to be designated priest for two parishes.

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  4. If I may,

    “pastoral administrator” is not her official title, since no such title exists.

    If the congregation have taken it very well, that tells you something about the congregation

    She should not be taking Holy Communion to the sick, since her hands have not been anointed for that purpose.

    She is not, repeat, not, a parish priest.

    +Doyle is no doubt very brave but then so is “Elf Archer”.

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  5. Wake up congregation! Do not drift along with your eyes closed but pray for a priest for your parish.

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    1. For all we know the congregation, or certainly individuals within it are awake, but those with the agenda want this experiment to work, cue the spin!

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  6. In my neck of the woods, the position is called "Pastoral Assistant", and such women do everything at Mass except consecrate, including reading the Gospel, delivering the homily and distributing Communion, all under the fawning approval of the parish priest. They even wear a 'chasalb' with 'stolette' - which, of course, color-coordinates with the felt banners hanging in what used to be the sanctuary. Everyone with a shred of sensus catholicus left such parishes some time ago, not long after the bishop established an FSSP parish for the faithful remnant.

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  7. "I’ve seen the congregation treating her exactly as if she was their parish priest,” he said.

    And this has been the objective all along, hasn’t it?

    Really: Does anyone really doubt that, were the ordination of Sr. Pilarski proposed to the congregation of Christ the King, that most of it would meet the idea with approbation?

    Episodes like this make it easier to believe allegations such as those of former Archbishop Elden Curtiss of Omaha that more than a few bishops were deliberately discouraging vocations in order to create opportunities to put women in charge of parishes, and ultimately to ratchet up the pressure to approve women’s ordination.

    I can’t say whether this was the agenda of Bishop Doyle or his predecessors. But plainly he and his officials are not at all displeased with the opportunity that Northampton’s vocations crisis has afforded them.

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    1. 'More than a few bishops were deliberately discouraging vocations ...' If I'm not mistaken, the same allegation was levelled at the English bishops a few years ago by Fr Dwight Longenecker. However, I'm told that aspiring ordinands are no longer automatically rejected for showing an unhealthy interest in the Latin Mass and seminarians can have Ratzinger on their shelves without disguising it as Rahner.

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    2. Hello Mr. Nolan,

      Unquestionably, the situation in seminaries and vocations offices has improved in many American and some British dioceses. There has been some progress.

      But I know a fair number of seminaries and new ordinands. Even in reputably "decent" seminaries, the word is still "be wary." Some dubious faculty remain, as do some gay cliques.

      I don't think that it's much of a secret at this point that a number of bishops and rectors in recent decades discouraged vocations from men who seemed too conservative, too traditional - and not just ones with obvious personality defects.

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  8. I am told that Traditional views and preferences are almost driven underground in seminaries. Any Traditional leaning seminarian has to be quite coy about things.

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