✣ Highlights from the week online
Reasons why Cardinal Nichols could be pope Former Tablet editor Catherine Pepinster, in a blog post for the magazine’s website, noted that Britain already has one top official at the Vatican: Archbishop Paul Gallagher, secretary for relations with states, in effect the pope’s foreign minister. But, she argued, there were good reasons to think that in the future a British prelate could occupy an even more elevated spot. She said there was a “certain murmuring in the trattorie around Vatican walls” about who might succeed Pope Francis. Some hope for a Pope who “would not be a divisive figure, who might draw together different parts of the Church, who bridges the gap between faith and the secular world, who knows Rome but has a strong pastoral background as well”. It’s not too much to say that, given these priorities, “thoughts may well turn” to Cardinal Nichols. Why Catholicism embraces oddballs David Mills at Aleteia quoted a Southern Baptist pastor turning away an “issue Christian” – someone with a pet issue who would be a nuisance – with the words “this would not be the right church for you”. The “issue Christian” can be annoying, Mills wrote. “He’s the one who calls at odd hours to pick apart a sermon or ... traps you after Mass when you need to ask Mrs Smith how her husband is doing after the surgery.” But the Catholic view, he said, is that “everyone belongs in his parish.” He went on: “You can be the world’s most annoying ‘issue Christian’ and you’re just as fully part of the Church as any saint. You don’t have to meet anyone’s standards but God’s.” And that, he said, “includes the odd, eccentric, and difficult, the clueless, the awkward, the annoying, the frustrating and embarrassing. It might include you.” The Church’s blind spot on single people At Crux French journalist Claire Lesegretain said the Church had a “blind spot” when it came to single people. “It’s there, very present, but nobody talks about it. We don’t see them.” Since she published a book about the life of single people in the Church in 1998 she had met “at least 2,000” single lay people looking for a Christian meaning to their celibacy. The interest came from her own experience, since she struggled with celibacy and faith in her 30s. “There is the question of fertility: who am I serving, who am I useful for? As a Christian, we were raised in the idea of giving ourselves, of loving one’s life. And to whom am I giving my life?” But she said that single people were “a chance for the Church”. In the “poverty” of single life, she said, “spiritually, there can be something very strong”. “It does not happen right away; it can be built over the years. Something fills us up: I feel loved by the Lord, and I can love through him.” The Church, she said, needed this “treasure”, “the capacity to love”.
