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The Black Catholics.
It was Vivienne, the wife of the only Bishop to come out of Eastfield, +John Goddard, who said that you would never find her husband wearing anything but black. I suppose, now that he’s been elevated to the upper bench, that he will have broken the habit of a lifetime and donned the purple. I won’t be doing that. That’s the understatement of the century. Admittedly, some of my shirts are so ancient that they are beginning to take on a greenish hue but the thought of wearing any colour but the clerical black is alien to me.
Arriving at the Archdeacon’s Visitation, I was quite appalled to see my brethren attired in pastel shades. I ask you, male clergy in bottle green and sky blue, what is the world coming to? We can excuse the women for going about dressed to match their curtains, that’s a feminine thing, but men? They look askance at me for wearing what people think is a frock (it’s a long coat, silly) but at least I don’t wear a girl’s blouse.
This secularisation of clerical dress is just another sign of the dumbing down of the church. I have been in services where a bishop has given the absolution and the blessing and nary an arm moved among the clergy, let alone the laity. No devout crossing of themselves, no bending of the knee, no genuflexion before the Sacrament. Maybe I belong to that lost generation who lowered themselves to the floor at the incarnation clause in the Nicene Creed but I still find it odd that people seem to have mislayed the ability to be physical in worship.
The happy clappies are quite keen to raise their hands in ecstasy (or is it to see if the roof is leaking) so why shouldn’t we be more open in our devotion? What is wrong with making the sign of the Cross? Why are people afraid to make devout gestures? I know that I am an unreconstructed black catholic who crosses himself at the sight of even an empty hearse, just in case, but isn’t it proper to show the signs of our faith in our actions as well as in our deeds? We might be the poor relations of this deanery but at least some of us do things properly. If others did it would teach the world that we Christians are still a force to be reckoned with.
May God bless you all, Fr. Allan
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