Various things conspire to bring on the January blues, like the fact that I have paid several hundred pounds in motoring fines in the past month. Not, I hasten to add, because of some violation of the law, but for forgetting to pay tolls or congestion charges, or in one case because a parking permit fell off the windscreen. A lack of discipline has cost me dear.
Cheering news comes in the shape of a new book defending clerical celibacy featuring Pope Emeritus Benedict and Cardinal Sarah. Certain media outlets have reacted to it with surprise or outrage. That the Pope Emeritus has defended clerical celibacy when Pope Francis is said to be considering change is being cast as some kind of political intervention. This is a rather frightening reaction. First, because it suggests that the reigning Pope should be considered as a political leader mandated to advance his ideological agenda. Second, if to assert that there is a perennial value in clerical celibacy is now an act of opposition, it tells us that we are living with a dangerous kind of pseudo-synodality in which such gatherings have the one-dimensional task of promoting innovation, instead of any function to defend or reiterate where the status quo is under attack.
