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Bishop at fete for homosexual couple?
Former priest, Church employee celebrate partnership
When Julian Filochowski and Martin Pendegast invited friends to a ceremony that would “celebrate 25 years of friendship and commitment to the pursuit of justice,” the conservative Daily Telegraph took notice, for several reasons. The event was, as the Telegraph described it, “a religious service of thanksgiving for the 25-year homosexual partnership between two prominent Catholics.” Guests were asked to share a buffet luncheon at Jesuit-run Heythrop College in London. And Bishop John Crowley of Middlesborough was expected to participate in the ceremony.
The exact nature of Bishop Crowley’s involvement in the mid-June celebration was not clear as CWR went to press. Bishop Crowley chairs the board of CAFOD: the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development. Julian Filochowski is the director of CAFOD. The Telegraph noted that in the past Filochowski had been “very private about his relationship” with Pendegast because of “his public profile in a major Church charity.”
Pendegast, a former Carmelite priest and AIDS activist, heads the Catholic caucus within the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement.
Church attendance in decline
Figures show Catholics more active
Church attendance in Britain is declining faster than ever before, according to a new county-by-county survey. At 4.5 percent of the population, South Yorkshire has the smallest proportion of people attending religious services.
Anglican Bishop Jack Nicholls of Sheffield told the Sunday Telegraph that the figures for the Church of England for South Yorkshire had been among the lowest in England for decades, if not centuries. He said, “The main factor is that we have a small number of Roman Catholics. They are better at going to church than other denominations,” he said. “The other thing is Meadowhall, in Sheffield, the busiest shopping mall in England. They say that the busiest shopping day is Sunday.”
At the other end of the spectrum, Merseyside, which has one of the highest concentrations of Catholics in England, also has the highest proportion of churchgoers, with 12.1 percent of the population attending Sunday services. Even there, however, the figures have slipped dramatically over the past two decades: between 1979 and 1998, the area has experienced a fall of 7.9 percent, the third steepest in the country.
Catholic Auxiliary Bishop Vincent Malone of Liverpool blamed the national decline in churchgoing partly on people’s growing feeling of self-sufficiency. He said, “Everything seems to be within our own control. We don’t have the same sense of dependency or the need to look beyond ourselves to theology.”