Birmingham Oratory Visit

If only we at the B3 blog had heard about this sooner - a missed opportunity to get to the bottom of the B3 scandal! (link) "It [the Bimingham Oratory]has also had it’s fair share of recent press headlines; be it the £30,000 metal theft in February where thieves wrenched a cross from it’s roof; or the ongoing campaign to "Free The Birmingham Oratory Three” (two priests and a lay brother who were exhiled from the Oratory in 2010). Come and find out more about this charming building and it’s history on our private guided tour."

Blogs promoting Pushkin

(and keeping schtum on the B3 issue)

The Hermeneutic of Continuity (link) - 26.11.2011

Fr Ray Blake's Blog (link) - 24.11.2011

Mulier Fortis (link) - 18.11.2011

The story in pictures...

With thanks to http://www.smeatonscorner.blogspot.com/

 



Birmingham Three Press Conference





"If your name's not down you're not coming in!"



 

Olympic Wit from the Oxford Oratory

Catholic and Loving It! Blog - 1.04.2011
http://www.lovingit.co.uk/2011/04/olympic-wit-from-the-oxford-oratory.html

Those fantastic wits at the Oxford Oratory pulled a hilarious April Fools Day prank in which they pretended that Fr Anton Webb has been selected to represent Vatican City at the 2012 Olympics.

The joke is on them of course - everybody knows that Oratorian's are best at...

...The Triple Jump!

The Birmingham Oratory - what a difference a year makes

Catholic Pater Familias blog - 9.3.2011

Take a look at the links below:

Birmingham Oratory newsletter 6 March 2011
Birmingham Oratory newsletter 12 March 2010

Pretty much a year apart but on 12 March 2010 we had:

"only the Catholic Church also teaches, clearly and consistently, the wrongness of contraception, homosexuality and abortion. What is at stake is her right, in her own schools, to continue to do so, free from State censorship and control."

On 6 March 2011 we get:

"This is because they would refuse to endorse a homosexual lifestyle for children entrusted to their care. They would not stop loving these children. They could not stop them doing what they wanted once they were of age. They simply would not say, as Christians: “This is something we can approve.” Many parents are in the same position on all kinds of issues."

Whilst I appreciate the subject being dealt with in each newsletter is different, there seems to be something of a change of tone. In one we have a clear and concise statement of the Church's position and in the other a degree of vagueness.

I'm not certain where the "all kinds of issues" comes into it unless one is trying to equate religious views on homosexuality with parental views on body piercings and tattoos.

Oh yes, I forgot, Fr Dermot Fenlon, Fr Philip Cleevely and Br Lewis Berry were removed from the Birmingham Oratory a couple of months after the March 2010 newlsetter.

Selective Hearing

Catholic & Loving It! blog - 9.3.2011

http://www.lovingit.co.uk/

Let me get this right...

Fr Dermot Fenlon is banished from his home at the Birmingham Oratory with absolutely no notice at all mere months before the Papal Visit while Jack Valero tells the world that there's nothing to worry about and it's all perfectly normal for members of a religious community to dissapear mere months before one of the most important events in that communities history even though they've done nothing wrong.

The "visitor" shifts people out and moves a new provost in and the stream of pro-life, pro-family press releases stops. The community has been taken over and silenced.

Austen Ivereigh has nothing to say.

Lesley Anne Night, secretary generral of Caritas International doesn't get to renew her contract and suddenly he's talking about a "Vatican coup".

Update: Today marks 300 days of unjust exile for Fr Fenlon.

300 days of exile for Fr Dermot Fenlon

http://www.catholicpaterfamilias.blogspot.com/ - 9.3.2011

This Ash Wednesday marks Fr Dermot Fenlon's 300th day of unjust and enforced exile from his home.

My prayers are with him and also for those who unjustly removed him from his home.

What a Difference a Year Makes!

Dr Matthew Doyle - Lacrimarum Valle Blog - 13.2.2011

http://lacrimarum-valle.blogspot.com/2011/02/what-difference-year-makes.html

Some interesting comments on this piece can be read at the Catholic and Loving It! blog.

Fr Philip Cleevely transferred to Toronto

Catholic & Loving It! blog - 6.2.2011
http://www.lovingit.co.uk/2011/02/fr-philip-cleevely-transferred-to-toronto.html

The man who Jack Valero said would be "back soon" has now been in exile for 269 days. Turns out I was right, his exile is to be permanent.


Here's the "official" version of events from the Birmingham Oratory website...

Fr. Philip has been resident at the Toronto Oratory since last September, teaching philosophy and spirituality to the students in the seminary run by that community. He has found this work very satisfying. Full use has been made of his intellectual gifts in the tasks assigned to him. He has in consequence asked for a definitive transfer from the Birmingham Oratory to the Toronto Oratory. The Fathers in Canada, recognising the contribution he can make to their community’s life and work, have agreed to his request
We would like to thank Fr. Philip for his contribution to the life of the Birmingham house over the last twenty years. We would also like to thank the Fathers of the Toronto Oratory, their Provost Fr. Jonathan Robinson, and Fr. Martin Hilbert and Fr. Daniel Utrecht who were such a support to us in the preparations for the Papal Visit. Our two houses retain close fraternal bonds and we look forward to continued close collaboration in the future.
[Source: Birmingham Oratory Homepage]

Note the official version contains absolutely nothing by way of an explanation of how Fr Cleevely came to find himself resident in Toronto. That despite being an innocent man, despite twenty years residence at the Birmingham Oratory, Fr Cleevely was not allowed to be present in his own home during the Papal visit.


This is a family blog, so I will delete the last two paragraphs I wrote and leave it there.

"Justice for Fr Dermot Fenlon" is still world news!

In September 2010, we reported that this blog had had over 15,000 visitors, from numerous countries,   including the USA, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, South Africa, India and even Vatican City State. 

We have now had over 25,000 visitors and our list of 'audience'countries has grown to include regular visitors from Russia, China, Singapore, South Korea, Latvia, Jamaica and erm... Austria.

It would seem that bloggers just have to mention Fr Fenlon's name to receive a visitation from Austria.   

Homelessness Sunday 2011

Archbishop of Birmingham, Bernard Longley,
discussing Homelessness Sunday at the Housing
Justice Conference, held in Birmingham in June 2010

Today is Homelessness Sunday, when we remember and pray for all those affected by homelessness.  We particularly remember Fr. Dermot Fenlon.

Archbishop of Birmingham, Bernard Longley, speaking at the Housing Justice Conference in June 2010, tells us that "the experience of being homeless, uprooted from what is familiar, or lacking in lasting security can undermine inner peace".  He also says that "the parable [of the Good Samaritan] reminds us how easy it is for good people to walk by on the other side of the road, too scared to get involved, too preoccupied to respond, or simply ignorant about the need."


A priest of his own diocese has today been homeless for 262 days.

The Birmingham Oratory's own newsletter today makes no reference to Homelessness Sunday.

What has Constantinople to do with Birmingham

from The Noise of the Crusade blog - 27.1.2011

http://www.thenoiseofthecrusade.com/?p=99

... On a matter quite unrelated, it is now 259 days since Father Dermot Fenlon was forced to leave his home at the Birmingham Oratory on grounds that are yet to be satisfactorily explained by those responsible. Together with Father Philip Cleevely and Brother Lewis Berry, he is one of the three to whom this website is devoted: it is recommended to those seeking a full account of this scandal, as are the observations of James Preece and John Smeaton. Suffice it to note here that Ecclestone Square’s official spokesman Jack Valero (of “Catholic Voices” – who else?) has variously claimed that Father Dermot (a) “can come back soon” (June 2010); (b) is “entirely guiltless of any wrong-doing whatsoever” (August 2010); (c) was exclaustrated for “pride, anger, disobedience, disunity, nastiness, dissension, the breakdown of charity” (also August 2010). For reasons which will be given, it is submitted that the significance of this last remark is to be found in the fact that the “nastiness” and “dissention” is not alleged to have been directed to other members of the community. Readers will be invited to view this remark as an example of the tendency of establishment liberals to tar defenders of orthodoxy as boat-rockers.

On 21 December 2007, Anthony Blair apparently converted to the Catholic Faith. “Apparently”, because he has publicly dissented from the Magisterium since then, for example on 8 April 2009, when he told the Pope to rethink the Church’s teaching on sodomy. On 15 September 2010 L’Osservatore Romano carried an article by Blair in which he sought to co-opt Newman’s teaching on conscience and the sensus fidelium to the cause of dissent. As John Smeaton observed at the time, (1) the publication of the article was shortly preceded by the announcement of the Birmingham Three’s exclaustration, (2) Father Dermot is “one of the world’s leading expert defenders of Newman’s legacy”, and (3) “since the removal of … the Birmingham Three the Newman Cause blog has had no substantial articles”. It has now disappeared altogether. While the Birmingham Three were at the Oratory together, several articles critical of Tony and Cherie Blair and directly related to the authentic interpretation of Newman appeared on the Newman Cause blog. For example:

“Since becoming a Catholic, Mr Blair has refused every invitation to disown and repent of [his anti-life/anti-family political record]… [S]ome commentators, including Catholics, have sought to justify it by saying that Mr Blair’s silence is because his support for abortion, embryo experimentation, civil partnerships and gay adoption has always been for him, and remains now, a matter of conscience. Now this is the danger in The Tablet’s association of Newman and conscience with the case of Tony Blair. If as a Catholic Mr Blair thinks that his conscience directs him to support such positions, to invoke Newman in defence of his stance would be a travesty. For Newman, no Catholic can be in good conscience in supporting the positions Mr Blair espoused. The impossibility of conscience, enlightened by Faith, justifying adherence to evil is one of the most important of Newman’s lessons for our times.” (October 2009: h/t John Smeaton)

Or this, published on 27 November 2009, concerning Deacon Jack Sullivan’s request that the Times remove from its website an article about a visit to Cherie Blair, which was sprung on him by some PR guy in the pay of a bishop:

“Unfortunately, Jack had not been made aware of Mrs Blair’s public opposition to the teaching of the Church. He undertook the visit in good faith, believing Mrs Blair to be simply a prominent Catholic. … The conjunction of Mrs Blair’s ‘conscientious’ dissent from the teaching of the Church with Jack Sullivan’s apparent endorsement of her could do harm to Newman’s reputation, and that is our reason for posting this clarification. Newman is indeed the great teacher of the rights and duties of conscience. It is of the greatest importance that his teaching is not used to make him the patron of Catholics, like Cherie Blair and others, who in the name of conscience practise dissent from the Church’s teaching. The decision to arrange Jack’s visit to Mrs Blair, and then to publicise it under Jack’s name, has not contributed to upholding a true interpretation either of Newman, or of Cherie Blair.”

If one was to think that the exile of the Birmingham Three, and Father Dermot in particular, was a manoeuvre in a wider campaign to appropriate the thought of Newman to the cause of liberal dissent by removing prominent critics of those who hold court at the heart of Relativism’s Dictatorship, then it is the humble opinion of this commentator that one would not be far off the mark.

Newman and his Nest: The Home of the Oratorian

Catholic and Loving It blog - James Preece - 18.1.2011
http://www.lovingit.co.uk/2011/01/newman-and-his-nest-the-home-of-the-oratorian.html
Home is a very important place to an Oratorian, as Blessed Newman wrote...

"The Congregation is to be the home of the Oratorian. The Italians, I believe, have no word for home - nor is it an idea which readily enters the mind of a foreigner, at least not so readily as into the mind of an Englishman. It is remarkable then that the Oratorian Fathers should have gone out of their way to express the idea by the metaphorical word nido or nest, which is used by them almost technically."

1848 Address (Newman the Oratorian by Placid Murray - Page 94)

Newman spoke a great deal about his home in the Oratory...

"...To come home again! in that word 'home' how much is included. The home life - the idea of home - is consecrated to us by our patron and founder, St Philip, for he made the idea of home the very essence of his religion and institute. We even have a great example in our Lord Himself; though in his public ministry he had not where to lay His head, yet we know that for the first thirty years of His life he had a home, and He therefore consecrated, in a special way, the life of home. And as, indeed, Almighty God has been pleased to continue the world, not, as angels, by a seperate single creation of each, but by means of the family, so it was fitting that the Congregation of St Philip should be the ideal, the realization of the family in it's perfection, and a pattern to every family in every town, and throughout the whole of Christendom. Therefore, I do feel pleasure to come home again... I feel I may rejoice in coming home again - as if it were to my long home - to that home which extends to heaven, 'the home of our eternity'..."
1879 Address (Newman the Oratorian by Placid Murray - Page 118)
Today marks 250 days since Fr Dermot Fenlon was ordered from his home at the Oratory. The Oratory spokesman assured me live on the radio that Fr Fenlon would be home "soon" but Fr Fenlon was not home soon. Fr Fenlon is still not home.

Fr Fenlon is "entirely guiltless of any wrongdoing whatsoever". It's official.

So can he come home now?

Please?

Cat becomes a star after Pope blessing

The Daily Telegraph - 8.10.2010

"Pushkin, the Birmingham Oratory cat, has become an unlikely religious hero after the Pope paused during his state visit to 'bless’ the feline and tickle his ears."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/the-pope/8052235/Cat-becomes-a-star-after-Pope-blessing.html

With news of the Pope meeting Pushkin the cat now widespread and indeed some reports claiming that the Pope gave the cat a "blessing", Free the Birmingham 3: Justice for Fr Fenlon asks why Fr Dermot Fenlon, Fr Philip Cleevely and Br Lewis Berry were not allowed to meet the Pope and receive his blessing?  Surely these three sons of Newman should have been afforded this dignity? 

This news story makes a mockery of the Pope's visit to the Birmingham Oratory.  It is grossly insensitive and insulting to Fr Dermot, Fr Philip and Br Lewis and it casts shame on those responsible for their exile.     

The Archivium Project

Cardinal Newman Archivium • Birmingham Oratory from Corpus Christi Watershed on Vimeo.

'Mean-spirited'

Catholic Family News - 26.9.2010
http://www.cfnews.org.uk/

In his Telegraph blog, Damian Thompson has commented on Father Fenlon's article about Newman's burial, published by STANDPOINT.

'Not by coincidence, I think, no sooner has the Pope left Britain than Fr Dermot Fenlon, one of the "Birmingham Three" Oratorians mysteriously sent into exile, has broken his silence in an article for next month's Standpoint magazine. . . . It's about Newman's burial and, reading between the lines, I'm guessing that a bitter dispute about the mortal remains of Blessed John Henry Newman formed part of this controversy. What isn't clear is whether Fr Fenlon thinks the Church did the wrong thing in attempting to transfer Cardinal Newman's remains to the Oratory church . . .Is Fr Fenlon trying to send a message to the Catholic world? It's hard to conclude otherwise, given that set into the body of his text is a short article by his Cambridge contemporary and friend Ruth Dudley Edwards. She has written before about the mystery of the "Birmingham Three", but on this occasion I can't believe that Standpoint would have printed her piece next to Fenlon's without his permission. [Update: Daniel Johnson, Editor of Standpoint, says in the thread below that Fr Fenlon didn't read Ruth Dudley Edwards's piece before publication and wasn't involved in the decision to run it. I'm assuming he didn't object to it, though.]

According to Dudley Edwards, Dermot Fenlon "gave up a glittering academic career to be a priest" and lived at the Birmingham Oratory for 20 years before being "suddenly ejected [and] banned from the Newman beatification". She adds:

Officialdom continued the policy of silence and concealment even as the blogosphere came alive with speculation and protest: a spokesman spoke opaquely of disunity within the community. Yet Roman Catholic insiders suggest that it was the Birmingham Three's defence of traditional teachings on sexual morality, and their belief that Church should challenge State, that posed an unwelcome intellectual challenge to the Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, during his time as Archbishop of Birmingham . . .

One Oratorian has been transported to South Africa; another has been sent abroad for three years to study; Dermot Fenlon, who is 68 and in frail health, is rumoured to have been banned from his home for five years . . . (G)iven that Fr Fenlon is a distinguished Newman scholar, long-standing member of the Birmingham Oratory and furthermore in frail health, it seems mean-spirited indeed to have excluded him from the beatification and the Holy Father's visit to his community'.

Pope pays tribute to Fathers of the Birmingham Oratory

The Catholic Herald - Papal Visit 2010: Pope’s homily at Cofton Park on Sunday 19th September.

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2010/09/19/papal-visit-2010-popes-homily-at-cofton-park-full-text/


"I pay tribute to all who have worked so hard over many years to promote the cause of Cardinal Newman, including the Fathers of the Birmingham Oratory".

Open letter to all Oratorians in the United Kingdom

To Fr Felix Selden, Fr Ignatius Harrison, Fr Richard Duffield & all Oratorians in the United Kingdom.

With just hours to go before the Holy Father beatifies Cardinal John Henry Newman at Cofton Park, we beg you to allow Fr Dermot Fenlon, Fr Philip Cleevely and Br Lewis Berry to attend this most important event in the life of the Birmingham Oratory.

One can only imagine the humiliation, the pain and the mental torment that these three men are suffering at not being allowed to attend the beatification of the man they have made it their vocation to follow. 

Please look deeply into your heart and ask yourself afresh:-

• 
  
  what is it that these three men have done?
• 
  
  do they deserve to be punished so severely?
• 
  
  is there no way that they can be afforded the dignity of standing beside their brothers at the beatification of their founder?

With every good wish, 

Friends & Supporters of the 'Birmingham 3'  

Priest is excluded from the Birmingham Oratory

The Catholic Herald – Simon Caldwell – 10.9.2010
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/ (not available online)

A priest at the church founded by Cardinal John Henry Newman has been effectively expelled from his community.

Fr Dermot Fenlon has been excluded from the Birmingham Oratory just weeks before Pope Benedict XVI arrives in Britain.

The Oratorian priest is the most senior of the so-called “Birmingham Three”, a group of two priests and a deacon sent on enforced retreat as part of ‘internal house-keeping’ by Church authorities in May from the community founded by Cardinal Newman in 1847.

While two of the three have accepted immediate postings abroad – and will miss Cardinal Newman’s beatification on September 19 – Fr Fenlon is understood to be refusing to agree to disciplinary moves against him.

Sources close to the Oratory have told The Catholic Herald that Fr Fenlon, 68, is now in the process of being “forcibly exclaustrated” for at least five years, when he will be 74, because he is objecting to the way he is being treated.

This means that although he technically remains a member of the Birmingham Oratory, he is exiled from his community in a move that will effectively retire him. He will not be allowed to return to the Oratory and must live elsewhere, although the Oratory remains responsible for his upkeep.

“He is going to be away for a very long time,” said one source. “But the Oratorians can’t just cut him off. They have to go on supporting him. The Oratory has a big problem. Where is he going to live? What is he going to do? The bishops will be reluctant to take him because of his situation”.

Under the Code of Canon Law, a priest cannot be exclaustrated for more than three years unless there is a “grave reason”. A prolonged period must also have either the direct approval of either the Holy See or the local bishop, who, in the case of Fr Fenlon, is Archbishop Bernard Longley of Birmingham.

Yet no Church figure has publicly given any reason why Fr Fenlon has been subject to such severe canonical penalties in the first place.

They have insisted from the outset that the action against him and the other two – Fr Philip Cleevely and Br Lewis Berry – was medicinal rather than punitive and that it did not concern any sexual impropriety. Jack Valero, spokesman for the Birmingham Oratory, has said, however, that the suspensions were partly as a result of “doctrinal tensions” – though none of these existed among the Oratorians themselves. The decision to exclaustrate Fr Fenlon was taken by Fr Felix Selden, the Apostolic Visitor to the Order who carries the authority of the Holy See, who has made just three brief visits to Birmingham in the last year.

As public disquiet mounted over the treatment of the men, the Vatican is said to have requested a speedy resolution of the crisis ahead of the papal visit. Authorities then offered to treat the three leniently as long as they accept a period of exile, agree to statements distancing themselves from criticism of the way they have been treated and drop any appeals they have lodged against the visitation.

Fr Cleevely, former spokesman for the Cause for Canonisation of Cardinal Newman, has agreed to go to Canada and Rome to research the influence of Newman’s writings on the Second World War martyr St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), while Br Lewis has gone to South Africa to undertake pastoral work. Both have issued statements denouncing criticism of the visitation.

But Fr Fenlon has refused not to appeal against his suspension.

The move to censure him may shock worshipers in Birmingham who know Fr Fenlon for his piety and his loyalty to the teachings of the Church. He has been particularly committed to preaching the “theology of conscience” of Cardinal Newman, a subject which has also been a great inspiration to Pope Benedict and John Paul II.

Fr Fenlon becomes the second Oratorian to be exclaustrated in less than a year, the first being Fr Paul Chavasse, the Provost, who in December was ordered from the Oratory until later this month after he entered a “chaste but intense” relationship with a 20-year-old man who had been rejected as a candidate to the priesthood.

A campaign is underway to reinstate Fr Fenlon. It includes Irish journalist and author Ruth Dudley Edwards, who was at university with him, and Jakob Knab, a German historian who worked with the priest in establishing the influence of Newman’s theology of conscience on Sophie Scholl, a student beheaded in 1943 for urging her fellow Germans to rise up against “Nazi terror”.

Dr Dudley Edwards said that her friend, formerly a Cambridge University don, had given up a “glittering academic career” to serve God through ministering to parishioners in Birmingham while devoting himself intellectually to the study of Cardinal Newman.

She said: “Then – at 68 and in indifferent health – he was thrown out of his home of 20 years, exiled indefinitely, banned from the beatification ceremony that would have been the highpoint of his life and forbidden to defend himself, although his reputation was being trashed in the blogosphere by those who assume that such brutal treatment must imply some grave sin. This good and holy man has been treated cruelly and unjustly.”

The Birmingham Oratory has declined to comment on Fr Fenlon’s case but Mr Valero, writing in The Catholic Herald last month, said: “the matter was entirely to do with relations between members of the community… sometimes a period of separation is necessary to restore perspective and calm nerves.”

Birmingham Three - still as clear as mud

Catholic & Loving It! Blog - Lovingit Locums - 11.9.2010
http://www.lovingit.co.uk/

See John Smeaton's blog for the most recent developments.


An innocent man of 68 has been expelled from his home for a minimum of 5 years.

This is a cruel and unusual punishment but for what?

Both Br Lewis Berry and Fr Philip Cleevely asked for Fr Felix Selden and others to be left alone. Well, that's exactly what is not going to happen. Fr Felix Selden & co have failed at every step to provide any answers.

Attempts by Fr Felix Selden & co to retreat behind this being 'a private internal matter' are fundamentally undermined by it having been them, through their ubiquitous spokesman, who leaked this story to the Tablet in the first place.

Fr Felix Selden, Fr Ignatius Harrison, Fr Gareth Jones and Mr Valero we do not believe you at all.

Until the truth comes out we will continue to ask questions. And, be assured, the truth will come out.