BRIAN QUIN S M, RIP: A HOLY PRIEST

Brian Quin, S M, died yesterday. Requiescat in pace. He will spend Holy Week with God.

Brian was a holy priest. I’m proud to say that I am one of his many first cousins, and I feel bereft.

Brian stood 6ft 7in and possessed a fine bass singing voice. The boys at St Patrick’s Silverstream, where he taught geography, including my three sons, called him ‘Chewie’ after the character Chewbacca in Star Wars, for his speaking voice.

I’m proud of Brian because he always wore his roman collar when most of his brother priests do not, for reasons of humility I’m told.

Well, Brian was a humble priest. If he hadn’t been humble he’d not have been holy – but he wore his collar with pride I believe, the same holy pride exhibited by St Paul who gloried in nothing but the Cross – and in these times of Modernity gone Mad, the Cross is perhaps heavier because there are fewer to carry it.

I’m proud of Brian because he stood and spoke and wrote for life when so few of his fellow Catholic priests did so.

I’m proud of Brian for being the first priest I knew who learned and spoke te reo. And for his patient years of scholarship, translating the early letters of the French Marist priests who were largely responsible for bringing the Catholic faith to New Zealand. 

New Zealand is the poorer for his passing.

Fr Brian's Requiem Mass will be celebrated at St Mary of the Angels, Wellington, on Tuesday March 27, at 1.30 p m.   

WHY THE GOOD OLD DAYS ARE GONE (Letter to Dom Post, March 24)

Remember the good old days when your baby was delivered by the GP you’d known for years? By comparison, maternity care now (Overcrowding puts vulnerable babies at risk, March 23) seems an even sorrier mess.

 

How come? The answer lies in the apparently anodyne line, “increasing complexities in the mother, including age and obesity”, and its subtext.

 

The good old days came to an end when abortion was legalised. Since then women have been able to delay giving birth by aborting unwanted pregnancies, increasing the chance of prematurity and its risks to mother and child in subsequent pregnancies. Waiting for their babies, many pass the optimum age for child-bearing and by abortion let themselves in for eating disorders.

 

Babies are not merchandise, to be ordered and delivered at a time that suits, or consigned to the rubbish bin if they’re not when or what you wanted. Born or unborn, babies are human beings and must be treated as such.

 

Otherwise we invite the consequences of “overcrowding, expensive transfers and worn-out staff”.

While our so-called Health Boards continue to kill unborn children, they will have to cope with ever-increasing difficulties in caring for the babies who escape their mothers’ wombs alive.

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CONFORMING TO STANDARD CHURCH 'ETIQUETTE'

I wear a mantilla to Mass. It's something above and beyond the call of duty, you might say, which I do to show reverence for the Eucharist. I decided to do it after hearing a homily which held up many of our 'pious' pre-Vatican II habits to ridicule and derision.

I was taken to task for that yesterday. To ram the message home today I was emailed a page from a book by Patrick Thomas McMahon, 'A Pattern for Life - The Rule of St Albert and the Carmelite Laity'. Father McMahon says:

"We should avoid extravagant displays of public piety. Our mannerisms in church or in any public place should conform to the standard etiquette that is expected ... we follow the guidelines of the local church. Where they kneel, we kneel. Where they stand, we stand. ... The Scriptures are our guide in the spiritual life."

First, it’s absurd to suggest that instead of obeying the Church with a capital ‘C’ we should follow the church - i.e. the local community - in whatever aberration they’ve fallen into. That just takes the cake.

In other words, if I’m asked to be what a church calls ‘a Special Minister’ (instead of Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion, and all that the word ‘extraordinary’ implies) and they use paper towels to purify the chalice, against the advice of the bishop, I should use a paper towel too. Or if a priest sits down and expects me as ‘Special Minister’ to distribute Holy Communion instead of doing it himself, I should do so. Or if people are laughing and chatting in church, I should too. Or if they don’t bother to genuflect, neither should I. And so on and so on.

Perhaps Fr McMahon has never attended Mass in a church like the one where I did yesterday, a ‘Mass’ which I suspect was invalid, where the sacred vessels and the Body and Blood of Christ were passed around from hand to hand like bread and butter plates. Where the priest talks and laughs while celebrating Holy Mass. Because that’s "the standard etiquette that is expected", should I conform to it, and talk and laugh too?

Second, if I'm walking down Courtenay Place in Wellington - a public place - should I conform to the standard etiquette that's expected, i.e. wear next to nothing and get drunk and pass out?

Third, it’s absolutely not only the Scriptures which are “our guide in the spiritual life”. As a Catholic and a Carmelite I'm guided also by the Magisterium and Tradition of the Church and the saints – especially the Carmelite saints.

You can expect a more sympathetic hearing from me in regard to Fr McMahon when he’s canonised.

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Wildflowers growing in the ditch in our lane (photo by Quentin Kynoch)



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IN CASE YOU PALMERSTON NORTH DIOCESE PEOPLE WERE WONDERING

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I've been asked - by a fellow vigilante, on the footpath outside Hastings Hospital last Thursday (Thursdays are when they kill unborn children) - about the recent request from the PN Diocese for suggestions to improve the Mass count (basically).

"Did you find out," he asked, "what's going to happen to our responses?"

I did. Having written a few pages - once I got started it was hard to stop - and knowing that at least two other parishioners had replied, I thought perhaps the responses could be circulated, with thanks.

Mainly because I remember years ago being asked to list all the hymns sung in our parish so the Diocese could approve them. Or not. It took me hours but I did so joyfully anticipating the day when I could biff  'A Mother as Lovely as You' (truly!). And it was 2018 before we were sent the List of Approved Hymns. 'A Mother as Lovely as You', I'm happy to say, was not on it.

But I digress. The parish team person I asked about the responses didn't know so I asked the parish secretary who asked Father.

Here's the reply:

This consultation is part of the Dioceses’ Strategic plan for the year 2018 and each parish feeds their ideas into this.  It is anticipated that the Bishop will sum up the pastoral year by issuing a pastoral letter to the Diocese.

So there you go. The Bishop will send us a letter.

A HAPPY ENDING - IN THE CHURCH OF NICE

I thought I should say that the story about the woman and the RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) has a happy ending.

She's coming to Mass again and is full of questions.

But seeing the subject's come up (see above), why is it called that? You'd think that the 'C' would stand for Catholic, as in Rite of Catholic Initiation for Adults. I had to google RCIA to make sure it's not. But is it about initiating adults into any old Christian church, or specifically into the Catholic Church?

I'm pretty sure it's the latter. So why not call a spade a spade? Are there fears that the term 'Catholic' might be seen as discriminatory and/or exclusive?

If so, it's a manifestation of the Church of Nice.

THE LOYAL WIFE AND THE BLACKMAILER (Letter to Dom Post, March 20)

If ever there were an example of ‘hate speech’, it’s New episode of Married An Orange Blight (March 19).

 

At the risk of being seen as coming out of “Trumpland”, I have to say in spite of the word “alleged” popped into the first paragraph, Jane Bowron’s sordid wallow in Trumps’s supposed affair and supposedly unhappy marriage amounts to libel.

 

In a remarkable inversion of the Christian mores still but ever more precariously upholding society, the text and carefully chosen photos depict the loyal wife as an awkward fool and a blackmailing ‘adult film’ (shouldn’t that read ‘soft porn’?) star as gorgeous and greatly to be admired.

 

But the unintended effect of Bowron’s fit of spleen is the light inadvertently shone on Melania Trump and her dignified silence.

Thank God some people still know how to keep their mouths shut.