Bishops in Exile

Fr dear Fr - What is this we keep hearing about, about some bishop who doesn't like the old style curias of these times and their methods, who has issued a letter or a sermon against them all, rather, and then gone into hiding in a variety of undisclosed locations? Is this sort of thing for real in a modern Bible-conscious Church?

Difficult to believe, like a psychological thriller movie, and one shares the feelings of disbelief of the reader, a young chappie from a village near Aylesbury GB not CT, but apparently a true story in some of its outlines, though the first thing we might say is that the pulpit or the sacred ambo is not the place for scoring goals and scoring hits against ecclesiastical others in the Church with letters alleging this or that, the ambo rather is a sacred furnishing which is built  for commentaries on the Word of God in one arm of tradition, tradition that is crystallised in one epoch, called the Bible. So this is not the place for such letters, not the forum. Bishop V - not Bp Vin though he too was brave and strong enough to publish an article distancing the GB episcopate from some of the interventions of the Roman curia on a specific case of euthanasia. But ascending pulpits to denounce other bishops or other officials, especially if one is a diplomat, can demean the ambo and reduce the Church to the kind of antics that used to be seen all over the very pukkha and nay respectable Church Times of the Church of England with one vicar getting up to lambast another vicar from their pulpits, in the old ridiculous pulpit wars of the 1980s and 1990s and 2000s - all grist to the mill if one is an editor of the Church Times, but somewhat surprising and sorprendente for the young people in the pews. Word of God, not words of men, required. Bible, bible, bible. So apparently Bp V has escaped from the VSS and has now gone into hiding, holed up in some out of the way farm or mission in the desert? Can it be real? Would Generation Z approve of such things? New Testament Writers – did they know of such things?

Like the controversies and debates and lawsuits of the current US Elections, in which states such as Texas are suing other states such as Pennsylvania, it seems machineries are bigger than any one individual. The large machineries of state grind down upon most human beings when they are isolated as individuals and are dislodged from their support communities, and though often it is opined to be different, even the very ordinary human machineries of the large diplomatic corps of the SCV also have a slight tendency to grind down upon the unwary foot soldier and unthinking mitglieder.  Bp V it seems has finally been offered up on the altar of the tendency in many regimes to immolate a lone wolf and to heap the blame of the whole system on an individual who has become isolated by events such as the Big Mac scandal. Yet it begins to acquire more and more interest, a grubby little case in which the shoddy side of human nature is much revealed, the story of a series of personal compromises which dovetail neatly though clumsily into modern America’s need for Aztec victims, only the Aztecs were more innocent, and did not conduct “queer bashing” expeditions most nights. So basically the above bishop has gone into hiding from which he periodically emits a letter of blame for his ills and woes as more and more officials in the leftwing Secretariats of the grander sort of SCV blame him for the likes of the Americans, especially but not exclusively Bp Big Mac, since there are other bishops who have had lapses of judgement from time to time and wallowed in the friendly mire of indulgent American condominiums in such places as Jamaica, Geoffrey and Ghizzer come back all is forgiven.

Generation Z might find this story not so much a scandal but something amusing since they are quite used to seeing their icons too go into exile or go into disgrace from time to time such as Rita Ora for breaching National Govt Lockdowns or Kay Burley for throwing parties with Beth Rigby and in flagrante delicto being caught flouting Medicare-State Social Distancing rules. But if we search through the New Testament for some light on such complicated and intractable cases, we will soon find something to cut our teeth upon, since the very cousin of Jesus himself, John the Baptist by human reckoning, also had to flee into exile.  He also had to hide himself from the world of men and women, he must have been good looking, and he lived out of sight in the deep deserts and caves of the wilderness away from the gaze of mortal men and from human regard and human pride. He went into a Gorky Park type of human exile, an internal exile, because he was hoping to hide from the pride of the world, a little like Bp V for his ills and his pains. Early Christian New Testament holymen and holywomen energised by the Second Coming felt it obligatory to hide from the pride of the world, the flesh, and the devil so to speak, all its riches, all its blandishments, its many attractions, its promises, just in order to be worthy of the Israeli Messiah when at last he should come. John the Baptist then did not have Made in Chelsea tattooed on his back or tailored on his camel-skin jacket, not for him the modern interest in attachment such as made famous by fragrances of Chanel called K, or Daisy, or No 7. He was not the kind of person to be found partying in exclusive posh restaurants in his personal Lockdown with a Rita Ora lookalike or a Taylor Swift doppelganger or a Blackpink Rosie lookalike, but rather sought out the Way of Contradiction, Contraction, Contrition. Like the young cousin of the young messiah to the Israelis, Bp V, possibly an in pectore too, also has had occasion to speak out and give some lip up to those middle management levels of church hegemonies, criticising those above him for their inattention to the details of his own reports on the cases of a few US monsignors. Bp V is in exile at the moment but is there any other way out?  No, no way out.