Khudaya, Rahem Kar

Fair play to Dame Sarah Mullally, who knew exactly which buttons to press at her installation. The winner of the recent Gorton and Denton by-election had been criticised for having issued a leaflet in Urdu, while Spanish was the language of both countries that had outstanding territorial disputes with the United Kingdom, so the Kyrie was sung in Urdu, while the Gospel was read in Spanish.

Alas, then, that in the readings for the Annunciation, Archbishop Richard Moth found himself having to read out, ostensibly from Isaiah, the dated and banal “a young woman shall conceive”, which would of course have been an everyday occurrence, while the passage from Hebrews 10 was omitted completely, when it has never been more urgent to proclaim the futility of the animal sacrifices of the Old Covenant. Christians must resist to the utmost any attempted restoration of the Temple cult, as is now being actively pursued with physical violence against the Christians of the Holy Land and of the wider region, including Pierre Moawad, whom the IDF has just admitted to having killed “by mistake” in Lebanon.

That brings us to the fact that there are at present three great threats to the unity of the Catholic Church. One is that the Society of Saint Pius X will consecrate more bishops, and the second is the German Synodal Way. The bishops of Bangladesh have declined the Government’s new monthly honorarium and festival allowance for religious leaders, lest it subject the steadily growing Church there to undue influence in future. The rapidly declining Church in Germany needs to refuse the Kirchensteuer, and call for its abolition at least for Catholics, since it had given everyone who paid it the notion that they were entitled to a say on doctrine. Nothing is worth that.

Most Catholics, however, will never directly encounter either the SSPX or the Synodal Way, much less will almost anyone else be affected by either of them. Whereas the third threat comes from the activities of Bishop Robert Barron, whose Word on Fire apostolate has done real good, yet who turned up to an Easter luncheon in Holy Week at all, never mind with Donald Trump, Paula White and Franklin Graham. At that event, Trump compared himself to Jesus on Palm Sunday, White compared Trump to Jesus on Good Friday and Easter Sunday, and Graham gave thanks to God for having raised up Trump to deliver victory to Israel over Iran. Days earlier, the Israelis had prevented the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem and the Franciscan Custos of the Holy Land from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Palm Sunday. Bishop Barron did not mention that, but he has spoken in the past of the need to “re-Judaize Catholicism”. Urgent action is now required.