Bernard to Birmingham

(news just in to take with me to St Edward's vigil mass)

By Damian Thompson

So Bishop Bernard Longley, auxiliary of Westminster, is indeed the new Archbishop of Birmingham: congratulations to my colleague Jonathan Wynne-Jones on the scoop. The appointment is a welcome sign of the times. Longley is witty and donnish, gentle and holy – and thoroughly in tune with Pope Benedict XVI’s vision of the liturgy.

That doesn’t mean that priests in Brum are suddenly going to turn eastwards (would you want to see the back of those polyester chasubles?) or that celebrations of the traditional Latin Mass will multiply. It does mean that the worship in a historic archdiocese covering Oxford is now the responsibility of a man who has an appreciation of pre-Vatican II liturgy and Pope Benedict’s apostolic letter Summorum Pontificum. So where there is demand for the older Mass, it will be met.

As for the real significance of this promotion, we shall have to wait and see. A question mark hangs over Bishop Longley, and it is this: he does not mind being described as a “conservative”, but is he prepared to encourage a conservative approach to the Magisterium and liturgy at the risk of incurring the displeasure of his brother bishops?

When I read Luke Coppen’s recent Catholic Herald interview with Bishop Longley, I worried that he might overdo the gentleness. Collegiality is all very well, My Lord (soon to be Your Grace), but look at the expensive mess it has created in England and Wales, where lay people have been “empowered” by bishops to impose their tiresome political agendas on fellow Catholics.

In one area, at least, there is no excuse for the new Archbishop of Birmingham not to give a lead. He studied at the Royal Northern College of Music before becoming a member of the choir of New College, Oxford, then as now one of the finest choral ensembles in the country. The musical trendies are as deeply entrenched in Birmingham as anywhere else, and it would not be like Bishop Longley to dislodge them suddenly; but one hopes he will do everything in his episcopal power to devise a model of parish musical liturgy in line with the Pope’s wishes.

Anyway, it is a welcome appointment; I have a feeling that +Vincent envisaged Bishop Kenney going to Birmingham, but he certainly holds +Bernard in high esteem. The Magic Circle, meanwhile, will interpret this as yet more evidence that things are not moving in their direction. Under a different Pope, the archdiocese would probably have gone to Kieran Conry. Instead, it has gone to an orthodox Catholic. That will please the younger generation of the faithful.