Bishops, lets drop the pomp

by Letters Editor · Published November 24, 2011 · Updated November 22, 2011

From Dr John Straughan, Cape Town:

In September Pope Benedict addressed the clergy and laity of the Church in Germany and a special one-liner emerged: �It is time once again for the Church resolutely to set aside her worldliness�.

Would that this could happen, and that our pope were to start the process perhaps by donning the simple garb of the Benedictine monks and carry a wooden staff/crook/crosier.

A Catholic encyclopaedia describes this staff as an �ecclesiastic ornament�, and while we acknowledge that it has great symbolism, it is repugnant that it should be the costly ornament that invariably we see.

Isn�t it beyond high-time that our hierarchy present to the vast impoverished population of our world some semblance of the Christ whose Church we claim it to be?

The Church That Forgot Christ, the title of a book by J Breslin, must seem very apposite to much of the population of the world when they see on TV and elsewhere the Constantinian monarchical pomp and splendour that typifies our hierarchy; would the Jesus Christ of Nazareth recognise such personages for other than the hypocritical high priests of his time on earth?

Isn�t the time right, as our Roman pontiff recommends, for the Church to �set aside her worldliness�, be seen to �go poor�, and to dispose of these disastrously expensive and outdated ecclesiastic accoutrements and then to donate the proceeds to the cause of the poor?