Archd. Birmingham – sede vacante

His Hermeneuticalness was not elevated to the See of Westminster. 

Fr. Finigan would have been a good choice!

Hey… wait… isn’t the Archdiocese of Birmingham going to be open?

Hmmm….

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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19 Comments

  1. John Enright says:

    If I could vote, it would be Fr. Tim, without a doubt!

  2. Tim Ferguson says:

    Milwaukee is currently vacant, and Fr. Finigan would be a welcome successor to Archbishop Dolan.

  3. Hmmm, coadjutor of LA?

  4. Tony from Oz says:

    Does this post signify the appalling inevitability of Arch Vincent Nicholl’s appointment to Westminster? And so the self-cloning of the existing liberal English Episcopal Conference proceeds apace, unopposed! Groan. Hopefully this is not true!

  5. tecumseh says:

    A pity Fr Finigan wasn’t appointed, still ++Nichols is only 13 years older than me, he still has time to learn where the VII generation went disastrously wrong….and he can start the re-building process.

  6. John Enright says:

    I don’t really understand your comment, Tony from Oz, could you explain what you mean?

  7. Isn’t this jumping the gun, another ‘sources confirmed’ story, of which there has been a plethora on this particular topic? There’s nothing on the website of the Archdiocese of Westminster about a press conference at 11 this morning, British Daylight Saving Time. Granted it’s 3:35am there right now.

    Doesn’t the Vatican make these announcements at noon, Rome time, which would indeed be 11am in London? Isn’t there an embargo on news of this kind? If this story is true, who is the person showing such disrespect for our Holy Father by giving it to Ruth Gledhill of The Times? Aren’t journalists honour bound to observe news embargoes?

  8. Truman says:

    Fr. Coyle appears to have awakened from a Rip van Winkle slumber: not only do we have news sources like the wireless now, but there are people called journalists who cultivate something called sources in order to provide information to their readers, a development occasioned by the perhaps lamentable popularization of moveable type.

  9. Thomasso says:

    It’s only 9.25 here in the UK, so nothing has been annouced yet – if indeed it is going to be! And if this news is correct, it’s not really an appointment in the Benedictine tradition. If it does happen, a bad appointment for Birmingham could easily follow- and that will not augur well for the Church in the UK. It will the worst of all worlds. Please continue praying for us in this arid land.

  10. kate says:

    The news is official now, and no, you can’t have His Hermeneuticalness!

  11. Tom says:

    How about Fr. Charles Duddleswell?

  12. Flabellum says:

    I believe HH will want to appoint to Birmingham a theologian in the mould of Newman.

  13. Jack says:

    I believe that Bishop Declen from Clifton Diocese is the front runner, as someone who loves the latin mass (of which his excellency has been trying to get rid of) Birmignham is welcome to him.

  14. Diocese of Westminster (link)

    His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI has today appointed the Most Reverend Vincent Nichols, who has been Archbishop of Birmingham since March 2000, as the next Archbishop of Westminster. Pope Benedict XVI has accepted the resignation of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor as Archbishop of Westminster. The Cardinal will now become the Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Westminster until Archbishop Nichols is installed at Westminster Cathedral on Thursday, 21 May 2009.

    Archbishop Vincent Nichols said: “As the Cardinal so graciously says, it is for me something of a return. I spent 16 very happy years here in Westminster, eight of them as General Secretary of the Bishops’ Conference and eight of them as an Auxiliary Bishop to Cardinal Hume in North London. I learnt a great deal from him, not least about the demands of the office of the Archbishop of Westminster and I am daunted by the task that lies ahead.”

    “It’s sad departing from the Diocese of Birmingham which I have learnt to appreciate, cherish and love. I will miss the priests and the people of Birmingham very much indeed.”

    “I would like to thank Cardinal Cormac, who has been an outstanding Archbishop of Westminster. He knows what it’s like to live through really hard times and he has come through them with great dignity and strength. He has been an outstanding public leader of the Catholic community in this country today and I know I speak for many when I express our steadfast admiration and thanks to him for all that he has done.”

    “I feel a real need to acknowledge my openness to and dependence on God above all else. But in this I am not unique. Everyone who seeks to follow the ways of God learns to depend on the truth, love and compassion of God more than on their own strength. I know that as I prepare to take on this new office in the Church many people will pray to the Lord that I will be strengthened for this task – and that is what I definitely need.”

    “We often hear of the challenges facing our country in finding cohesion in the face of great diversity. Our churches are places where people are from a wide variety of different racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds. They come together, work together and contribute together to the wider good of our society. The Church in this country has a great deal to offer and I hope to do my best to contribute to that project in this new role.”

  15. Maureen says:

    Let’s all pray for the new archbishop. Whether he was your candidate or not, he has a big job. And what would we have thought of Thomas a Becket when he was appointed?

    Ooh, ooh, Father Z! Write up a news story about the disastrous Becket appointment!

  16. ED says:

    His first job should be to convert Tony blair and his Mrs. to Catholicism, i’ve heard them both and they definitely didn’t convert to orthodox Catholicism.

  17. Gordon says:

    HUH!!! Not impressed with this appointment. How depressing. We can only pray that new archbishop surprises everyone with an openness to tradions. What we seem to be getting is a whole bunch of moralists but with no real sense of true Catholicism, thus, all their moralizing means nothing when the churches are empty and preists are never to be seen.

  18. Rev.d and dear Fr. Zuhlsdorf,

    Fr. Finigan is doing fine work where he is. Often, when people have called for your elevation to the fullness of Orders, I have asked that they consider carefully. Usually, I have written some variant of, “You do not love Fr. Zuhlsdorf, if you wish such a thing [as ordination to the Episcopacy] on him.”

    We can hope and pray for good pastors, but I would not wish a bishopric on my worst enemy.

    YOS,
    C.

  19. Jeremy says:

    There has been so much unseemly squabbling over this appointment and we appear to have got just another club member elevated.

    This one will certainly be an improvement on the last, but how much better to have cleared the decks and had a new man in there as we had hoped. It would have sent a clear message to our Bishops to get their act together. This appointment just pats them on the head.

    As far as the EF goes, he will not hinder it, but I doubt he will do much to promote it. Good job plenty of others will. The gap at Birmingham might mean inconvenient moves to fill the gaps by others elsewhere too.

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