We All Know What We Saw.
Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe and the Pimlico Mass
When I was about 6 years old, unable to sleep, I snuck downstairs at what I imagined was midnight but was likely 9pm. It was a rare occasion when my mother was out for the evening, probably at the CWL (Gimme a yikes!) and I found my dad in the living room watching what I later came to understand was a Hammer Horror film. Unlike ever vigilant mum, who monitored what we watched on telly like a soviet prison guard, dad swept me up in his arms and sat me on his knee as we sat back to watch this film together.
There was a scene which has stayed with me throughout my entire life. At one point, a beautiful and frightened looking woman appeared at a window, pleading with whoever was inside to open it and let her in, claiming her life was in danger. Her beauty and her vulnerability struck me. I wanted to open the window for her and let her in, I could see how terrified she was. The person inside refused her entry several times, causing this beautiful angel to plead in fear, as tears fell down her delicate and innocent cheeks. I was frightened for her; I remember thinking that anything could happen to her out there in the dark alone. At last, the person inside relented and opened the window. At that exact moment, her face changed as she bared her inordinately sharp incisors and dug them straight into this poor bloke’s neck. I let out a scream, turned inwards to hide my head in my father’s chest, and began to cry. At this point I think my dad panicked somewhat, realising how terrified I was, and shooed me off to bed before mum got back.
The idea of sleeping ever again seemed impossible. I tossed and turned, glancing at my window in fear. It didn’t help that we lived in a dormer bungalow built into a wood, where the branches of nearby trees brushed against it. I have often reflected on what was so utterly terrifying about that scene. There was no blood and guts, no masked marauder with a chainsaw, no heads spinning and projectile vomiting, but it remains one of the most terrifying things I can recall.
Years later, I took my own children to see a cartoon film called Zootropolis. In it there was a meek and gentle little sheep who turned out to be the villain. As the film draws to its conclusion, the ‘good guys’ run towards this sheep, in total trust, reporting their findings to her, only to have her countenance turn before they realise she had been the ‘bad guy’ all along. The meek and mild sheep! Impossible!
I rolled my eyes and brushed it off as more Hollywood pap, but my youngest couldn’t sleep that night, or the night after, or the night after that. It transpired that she was deeply affected by the deception. She had liked the innocent little sheep and considered her to be the one character who she could trust in the whole film.
What had disturbed us both so greatly in these experiences was the realisation that a greater peril than the evil we can see, is the evil we cannot.
A person who disguises their true intent behind an outward show of innocence and niceness is a danger to watch out for. If it is true that such deceit is frightening, it is even more so when the villain is dressed in the robes of the perfect and spotless victim – Christ himself.
As the SSPX were busy being excommunicated, we reported on a mass that had taken place at Holy Apostles, Pimlico. In attendance at that mass were several priests, 2 Bishops and 1 Cardinal. That cardinal was Timothy Radcliffe OP.
The Mass was organised to celebrate the 50th anniversary of two men; Julian Filochowski and Martin Pendergast. Lest anyone is in doubt regarding the nature of the mass, the transcript as outlined in this article, removes any prospect of plausible deniability about what occurred. This was a mass that betrayed Christ, and his spotless Bride the Church.
And Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe was at the centre of it.
“Such people are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve. I repeat: Let no one take me for a fool” 2 Corinthians 11:14
And this is exactly what Cardinal Radcliffe takes us for. Fools.
Shortly after this mass was ‘exposed’, he gave an exclusive interview to AdVaticanum to ‘clarify’ his role.
In it he ‘firmly distanced himself’ from any suggestion that he had participated in a specific blessing of the couples relationship. “I gave no blessing” he said.
This calls to mind the changes made to the Serious Crime Act in 2007, which was altered to include ‘Joint Enterpise/Secondary Liability’. Under this law a person who acts to encourage or assist an offence can be prosecuted as if they were the main perpetrator. If a bystander is present and their presence or actions are intended to encourage or assist the primary offender, they can be convicted alongside them.
Whilst I’m not advocating for Cardinal Radcliffe to be shoved into the back of a police van face first, this change in law does recognise a reality that the church identified long before Blair’s government did. That Morality doesn’t just consist of avoiding evil but also of avoiding doing good. Hence St. Thomas Aquinas’s articulation of the first principle of morality: “Good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided” (Summan Theologiae, I-II:94:2). The Church names these ‘Sins of Omission’.
At each mass we pray the confiteor saying ‘For what I have done, and for what I have failed to do’.
Cardinal Radcliffe failed that day. He failed to say no to his friends. He failed to love them.
In the interview he goes on to say “It was agreed that this occasion should be private. Why the privacy was not respected I do not know. So, making it more public by writing articles about it would be against the will of the Church. This [mass] was not designed to celebrate gay relationships as such. To promote it as such would be to misrepresent it. To do so for the purposes of exciting scandal would be morally wrong.”
Ah…you see what’s happening here? The real villains are those making a stink about it.
One wonders what Cardinal Radcliffe is really more concerned about - the fact of the mass itself, or that it was made public.
We all know what we saw. I cannot explain why Holy Apostles decided to put that mass up on their YouTube channel – but they did. That was their choice. And once they did so, they made it open to public scrutiny. One can surmise that they were proud of it, until exposure to the light blinded them. Unlike Saul, they retreated and hid. Unlike Saul, Cardinal Radcliffe excused, gaslighted and manipulated his way out of it.
I am to understand that having declined an interview with us, he will appear
