If, as can only be expected, the Church will soon need to rely increasingly on the faithful from and in the so-called Third World, how can it hope to impose such narrow, prescriptive Liturgical Correctness on, say, the vibrant, expressive African liturgical traditions in communities for whom singing and dancing  as they pray comes as natural as breathing?

Right Reverend Mervyn Alexander DD LLD (Hon)
Eighth Bishop of Clifton

Right Reverend Mervyn Alban Alexander DD LLD (Hon), the eighth Bishop of Clifton, died on 14 August 2010 at St Angela’s Home in Clifton, Bristol.

We Are Church honours his memory as in the Clifton Diocese Bishop Mervyn encouraged the growth of pastoral collaboration between clergy and laity. Under his leadership the diocese became one of the first to set up a Diocesan Pastoral Council and was the first Catholic diocese to appoint a lay person as Financial Administrator.

Mervyn Alban Alexander was born on 29 June 1925 in Highbury, London, the eldest son of William and Grace Alexander. The family moved from London to Salisbury, Wiltshire, when he was one year old.

He began his schooling at the Bishop Wordsworth Grammar School in Salisbury and later went to Prior Park College, Bath. He trained for the priesthood at the Venerable English College, Rome and was ordained priest on 18 July 1948 in the Leonine College, Rome. He continued his theological studies at the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome, and obtained his doctorate in divinity in 1951.

Returning to England he was appointed assistant priest in the Cathedral parish, Clifton, Bristol, where he served from 1951 to l964. He acted as Chaplain to the Bristol Maternity and Homeopathic Hospitals. He also became part-time Chaplain to the University of Bristol in 1953 and was appointed full-time Chaplain in 1964. During this time he opened the University Catholic Chaplaincy on Queens Road as a study and residential centre for students. The Chaplaincy continues to serve students today.

We are grateful to the Irish Times and Dr Mary Condren for allowing us to reproduce Dr Condren's article here.

THE VATICAN’S recent Normae de Gravioribus Delictis document prescribes automatic excommunication for anyone involved in the ordination of a woman. In according greater penalties to those who “attempted” women’s ordination than to clerics who abused children, it has further shocked many loyal Irish Catholics, prompting them to inquire about the theological reasons why the Roman Catholic Church objects to women’s ordination.

A Vatican document issued in 1976 set out some of these arguments clearly.

1. That incarnation took place in the male sex and therefore women were excluded from the priesthood

Logically, this means that women should be excluded from baptism as well, since it is an ancient teaching of the church that “whatever has not become incarnate cannot be redeemed”. If the church insists here that “God became man” means God became male, then it cannot simultaneously argue that in liturgical language “man” means both male and female.

2. That no women were ordained in the New Testament

Jesus did not ordain anyone. Ordination as we know it today did not take place at all in the New Testament, and took another 300 years when Christianity and empire merged.