Editor’s note: Many of you have written plaintively about the dearth of news about Most. Rev. Francis Atticus McButterpants, Bishop of Libville, suffragan of the Archdiocese of Red Bird.
One priest, a Jesuit as a matter of fact, but Catholic, wrote:
I am worried about Bishop McButterpants, hope he is ok!
One of my clerical correspondents texted:
The Source who has access to The Diary had a family emergency and needed to leave town for a while. Emergency resolved, a few pages have started to come in over the transom, as they say.
I’ll try to get some of these out in good time. However, since the bishops are meeting in Baltimore….
November 11th 2023
Dear Diary,
This awful day started last night when I get a bunch of calls from the guys who’ve already heard that bishop in Texas Strictland finally got the axe, just before Baltimore too. We knew it was going to happen but I can only think of a few bishops who wanted it to. They would have been better choices, too, wishing that on someone! All the unhappiness. All the upset. Poor guy. He seems really nice. I wonder if he’ll be in Baltimore? I should take him to lunch or something. But only if the Nuncio has left. Gotta remember to sit waaay in back during the meetings this week. Yeah… and that’s another thing. I hate these meetings. Such a fuss. They send loads of stuff to read. Fr. Gilbert is useless at sorting out what I need to pay attention to and what I can round file. What am thinking? Give it all to Chester! He’s been getting more and more irritable lately so he’s just the right guy for the job. Strange dog. He is like that Hide and Jackle guy. He’s jello around Gilbert, but with Tommy’s he’s a loaded gun. No walking Chester for Fr. Tommy, that’s for sure. Since he’s been back he been a little snippy. After Mass at Spirit n Truth, we stopped off at that great burger and shake shack off of the highway. It’s always busy. So I’m digging into the triple with everything and really enjoying my strawberry malt and there’s this tug at my sleeve. A little boy, maybe 7. “Hey there son! Where are…” He says, “What are the attributes of the Church?” Just like that! He says again, “What are the attributes of the Church?” Really loud. I look around and see standing a little ways off his parents, with several other kids of various heights all staring at me. Other people too. Dad’s got his arms crossed and mom… if looks could kill whew. The kid again says, “What are the attributes of the Church?” Louder this time. Across the table behind me Tommy is muttering something that I can’t quite catch. I figure a little humor is in order so I say, “Well, sonny, my attributes are short, fat and hungry! So, I think I’ll just…”. Mom says, “You don’t know, do you.” Tommy, slightly louder behind me is saying them. “Of course, I’m a bishop right? You don’t get to be one of those without…” “So what are they?” says mom. Tommy’s like one holy cath… “One, holy, catholic and apostolic, missy. That’s it.” The kid heads back to dad who says, “We drive an hour and half each way to go to a Latin Mass because of you. Have a great lunch.” What the hell am I supposed to do? A couple of the guys said that Tyler got creamed because he didn’t get rid of the Latin. And the noonch was already on my case about that annulment thing and something about that other thing. Jude over in Black Duck better watch out. If this is how it’s gonna be, we are all in deep doodoo. Anything’ll do. Anyway, after lunch we’re back in the car and Fr. Tommy is quiet for a long time. “What?” “Did you really not know the attributes?” “SURE I did! I was just playing along.” He clamed up after that. I couldn’t think of them. We had those in like zero grade with Sr. Mary Gerard. How didn’t I know them? I wonder if the other guys could’ve answered. I know Jude could. Dozer? Ha. I lied to Tommy. I feel terrible. How could I do that?
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To be fair to his Excellency, I’m pretty staunchly against harassing people while they’re eating. Or generally “off the clock” when it’s not an emergency. It seems so uncivilized to me. All the shouting and vitriol has been promising, since the 16th century, to somehow result in a “better” civilization, and yet each time it makes it worse.
TheCavalierHatherly says: harassing people while they’re eating
Good point. They had a rare chance. They took it. I wonder what might get such a bishop’s attention in a less invasive way.
As I read your comment, I had the image of what officers of the NYPD did to the mayor at a cop’s funeral: they turned their backs to him. In Chicago they did the same to their dreadful mayor. That has to sting.
Re: how to get his attention, my suggestion would be to have one of the adults approach him and politely say something like, “Your Excellency, I really hate to disturb you while you’re eating your lunch, but might you have a minute to speak with me privately when you’re done? It’s a spiritual issue about our family.” Unless a bishop were extremely pressed for time, that would be hard to refuse. Then, in that minute, they could explain in a moving way the harm being done by the TLM policies in Libville.
To send one of the kids to try to “gotcha” +Fatty, followed by mom and dad’s statements (if +Fatty’s account of them is accurate), was not only a waste of a rare chance, but would have confirmed any negative impressions he may have had about those who love the TLM. Yes, +Fatty perhaps deserves it, but it wasn’t a very productive approach. (It DID get him thinking, a little, but not about the plight of his traditional Catholic faithful).
That other thing will get you every time! Especially with the noonch! Lol
**harassing people while they’re eating…
Of course, Bp. Fatty sounds as though eating is a pretty constant thing with him…
Seriously, the guy is sort of lovable. Ignorance has that sweet silly quality that makes me want to buy him a lollipop and hand him a Penny Catechism. (Isn’t there a joke in there somewhere? “What do you call the dumbest guy in a miter? Your Excellency.”)
What would have been far worse: if he didn’t even care what the attributes of the Church are (and was annoyed by an old-fashioned word) because we are all singing a new church into being — in fact, We are Church!
“I wonder what might get such a bishop’s attention in a less invasive way.”
In this particular instance, I would suggest inviting him to a barbecue. [LOL! You can catch more bishops with bbq sauce than you can with vinegar?]
Speaking practically, it’s a rare occasion in which something like this results in a positive outcome. The most likely scenario is some smug self-satisfaction for the family, and a negative memory for the bishop. “What’s wrong with these people?” Leads very naturally to the conclusion that TC was the right thing to do.
However, the main problem here is that we’ve badly grafted an ancient institution into the modern world. And so we have these distant office managers and statistics, instead of shepherds and sheep. This is further complicated by the sort of general isolation produced in a modern atomised society. While wicked men will be wicked men, there are a number of others who go along because they’ve never been presented with an attractive “other” option.
That option is the “Hermeneutic of Conviviality.” People are far likelier to help those that they have a tangible relationship with. Also, it’s nice to have friends, even when if you never “get something” out of it. (Besides Aristotelian Eudaimonia)
[H of conviviality… I like it. I’ve not done so for a while, but fairly often I used to pound away at trads especially to be inviting, friendly, the first to volunteer. Etc.]
+Fatty empathizes with +Strickland? Did I read that right?
I’m lost for words…perhaps he in fact purchased some new lace which he is hiding from Chester and Fr. Ralphus, SJ.
Hope is a far greater a theological virtue than I realized.
In the December of 1197, a council of Barons was held at Oxford. The king, through the Justiciar Archbishop Hubert, demanded from them all – bishops as well as lay barons – a supply of troops for his war in France. The bishops were for consenting. Episcopi semper pavidi – “Bishops are always timid.” – was a mediaeval adage. Hugh, however, was a Bishop of different calibre. He took a firm stand on the principle that his church was bound to provide military service only in England. …
E.I. Watkin on St Hugh of Lincoln (Watkin, “Neglected Saints” Sheed and Ward, 1955)
In there an undiscovered early medieval Litany of Bishops somewhere?
…
V. Episcopi semper pavidi ……. R. miserere nobis.
…
To quote Tolkien’s alter-angel character, Gandalf –> “and so it begins”.
His Corpulence, er, Excellency has had that rare gift of the Smack Up’side o’the Head, and is reflecting, one might even say examining his conscience, though that might be too much recollection in one day for the dear bishop. How many of us go through life and never notice the smack? How many of us just pass it off to too much grease on the burger and wash it away with more antacid? Here, for a brief moment, God’s instrument of pushy parents of a child with no inhibitions, grace has a foothold on +Fatty’s soul. What will he do next?
Frankly, my money’s on the antacid, but as they say, the Lord works in mysterious ways.
Since +Atticus is in Baltimore, he should plan to go to one of the hard-shell crab houses with his episcopal confreres to talk things over, out of sight and hearing of His Eminence the Nuncio. I am sure he would enjoy the crab, but at the hard-shell crab houses one has to work for one’s food with the hammer on a table covered with paper. Fun stuff: he could take out his frustration by hammering the crab! I used to do it often when I lived in Charm City.
Back in 2014 after Mass my wife and I were having lunch at a Ruth’s Chris steakhouse and saw the now late Bishop Emeritus Foley of the diocese of Birmingham Al. He was dining alone and when I went over to speak to him he told me that he had to get a good meal in because he had been fasting for the end of abortion and had become light-headed. By this time this bishop, who had once (1998) ordered all masses in the diocese to be offered ad populum especially those on EWTN, was now regularly offering TLM’s and several years earlier had thanked the Latin Mass congregation because it made him feel like a priest again. He would always hear confessions before he celebrated TLMs. I had no doubt he was really fasting. BTW his Latin was wonderful.
I wonder what affect it might have on the church if all priests and bishops in purely administrative positions in the church had to hear confessions for at least 30 minutes a day.
I have to admit, if someone came up to me mid-burger and asked me what are the attributes of the Church I might be in trouble. I mean there are the attributes, and the precepts, unless you just got done with CCD you might not remember which things go with which term. Let’s not forget the cardinal virtues and the theological virtues, I sometimes get them mixed up. The point is, I might know that the Church is One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic and even know what those terms mean but I might not remember the fancy term used for that set of characteristics.
It would be interesting to see an episode of +Fatty being assigned the task to conduct an “apostolic visitation” to a diocese or some other Church entity on behalf of the current Vatican. Ha!
JonPatrick: “but I might not remember the fancy term used for that set of characteristics”.
Yes, I had to think for a second or two before it clicked: “ahh yes, the four *marks* of the Church” is what we learned, these many years ago now.
JonPatrick makes an excellent point — it’s been a long, long time since I thought about the “four marks and three attributes” of the Church, the “three attributes” being authority, infallibility, and indefectibility.
So if we’re going strictly on a “do you have the Baltimore Catechism so well committed to memory that you can bring up the right list immediately on any occasion” basis — a good thing to be able to do, to be sure — then it seems like even Fr. Tommy was barking up the wrong tree … um .. list.