The Portal - Australia edition April 2014 | Page 16

THE P RTAL

April 2014

Page 12

Dogmatic
consistency
by Geoffrey Kirk

You know

what Anglo-catholics are like: they all have several reasons
for not joining the Ordinariate and are reluctant to tell you any of them.
They routinely assume – have you noticed this? – that you are somewhat to the
right of Opus Dei, and that in consequence you are embarrassed by Pope Francis.
‘How are you getting on with your Pope Francis?’
one of them asked me the other day. My Pope Francis!
I forbore to point out that the Pope is like a great work
of art or a public building: he necessarily belongs
to everybody. ‘He’s certainly put the cat among the
pigeons with his statements about human sexuality
and his questionnaire to ordinary lay people.’
I forbore to point out what my interlocutor had
clearly not noticed: that the process of election of a
Pontiff is organised to ensure that the resulting Pope
is a Catholic. ‘You’re going to look rather silly if he
decides to ordain women.’ I bit my lip.

frequent volte-faces of politicians, is inclined to think
that the Vatican operates in the same fickle way: new
Pope, new doctrine. Alas! Time will disabuse them of
that naïve superstition. If Pope Francis’s current media
celebrity is based on the assumption that his primary
task is to undo the life’s work of ‘Rottweiler’ Ratzinger
and John Paul II, we had all better prepare ourselves
for the fall-out. His popularity will be short-lived.
‘We declare that the Church has
no authority whatsoever to confer
priestly ordination on women.’

The glorious truth is that the Catholic Church is
radically ill-suited to be the servant o