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ginning to glimpse, in a world torn by divisions and draped with iron curtains, that the spectacle of 450 million Catholics gathered in unity at the feet of the Papacy is something unearthly.
"Dimly they are beginning to realise that this spiritual NATO of the West may well be the non-conventional weapon that it needs most."
Rallying his diocese to a more intense participation in the Mass, the Bishop wrote in the Lent of 1959 that the foundation of true Catholicism meant thinking "with the mind which the Church has .in this particular age, and not following a train of thought which the Church had two or three hundred years ago."
What the Church said 300 years ago will be the same as what she says today, he added, but the emphasis and accent will be different. The age in which we live is "the community age", an age in which isolationisrn is dead.
Christian practice, the Bishop continued, meets the aspiration of a world that is more of a family than it used to be. This emerged. he said, from statements like Mediator Del and Musira Sacra. reminding us as they do that the Mass is the centre of the Mystical Body's community of prayer.
The Archbishop-designate will present the Bull of Appointment, when it arrive some weeks hence. to the Metropolitan Cathedral Chapter of St. David at Cardiff, and thereueron take possession of the see. The date of enthronement in the cathedral is not yet fixed.
Regret
THE Archbishop-designate's impending departure is causing the deepest regret throughout the Shrewsbury diocese.
"He has done tremendous
amount for the diocese," said Canon Peter Coughlin of the English Martyrs, Wallasey, when we spoke to him this week. "His building programme must he something of a record. Always very affable. yet always very strong, he is most popular among the clergy and everyone in the diocese is going to he very sorry indeed that he is leaving us."
Since Bishop Murphy took over the Shrewsbury diocese, the number of priests on active work there has increased from 126 to 150, parish churches from 64 to 85, children in the schools from 16,400 to 24.000.
At .least 10 secondary modern schools have been built in the diocese during this period, and more are about to he built. Some 30 new churches are either completed Orr are in course of construction.
With very few exceptions, the Bishop has always insisted on permanent buildings. one of the finest examples being the church of St. Cuthbert at Mouldsworth.