A Horrible Memory

A few days after being received into the Catholic Church in 1989, I went to Mass, I think on a weekday, at Farm Street. It was the week of Christian Unity.

Father (Professor) Thomas McMahon S.J. (I think) gave the homily, and declared:

"The time will come - certainly in our lifetimes, when there will be no Catholic Church, no denominations. We shall all be together. It will be a new church. Many people will be sad at having to give up much which they love....."

He did not elaborate on what we should have to give up in the credal horse-trading which would clearly precede this amalgamation, nor on whether the new church would be world-wide, or merely a British phenomenon.

My oral memory is very good, but not perfect, and I may have misrepresented the actual words, but certainly not the sense. It was a shock - 30 years deliberating whether to become a Catholic, and now - had I hitched my wagon to a dead horse?

I whizzed into the confessional, but not to confess, and the priest, Father Bermingham, reassured me that nothing was going to change. He was wise old man, like Father John Tracy S.J., to whom I owe my final decision to convert.

I don't know whether Professor McMahon is still alive. If he is, I suppose there is still time for his prediction to be fulfillled. Time for nuancing, lying.

But how, why?

The truth is not negotiable.

The clever money is still on the Pope.