In the last couple of days I have watched the Pope Michael Documentary Film. I was pleasantly surprised. (Don’t worry! Surprised but not convinced.) The music was great, the story telling exceptional, and the people came across not as right-wing nuts but as average people struggling with a new situation. Apart from a little section where Eli outlines his views (with associated pictures), the documentary – by design? – is devoid of the extreme rhetoric that is often associated with these type of people. It also precluded the circular argument if you do not agree with me you are part of the problem often used within these contexts. As the website says: “Despite people’s usual first impression, the Bawdens and the two seminarians – Phil and Eli – are quite normal. Their situation is just a little strange.”
I would be interested to know what event – not idea but event – moved the Bawdens, Phil and Eli to the conclusions they have reached. I recall reading of a person who could not except female altar servers and lay Eucharistic Assistants. When these started within his parish, he felt forced to adopt a sedevacantist position. I wonder what the trigger – the existential crisis – was for the Bawdens, Phil and Eli to necessitate this radical move?
However, this strange situation gives us an illustration of what Marcel writes about – as I mentioned in the last post – a truth pushed so far that its very nature is changed. In an attempt to defend the Catholic Faith, as Bawden himself refers to it, has he not fundamentally changed the object he thinks he is defending? He has moved from describing the Catholic Faith, and living it, to prescribing a new Faith for others. He has disconnected himself from the living tradition of the Catholic Church in an attempt to defend it.
I make no excuses for the excesses and liberalism of some members of the Catholic Church. I do not buy into the extreme interpretations of Vatican II. While Pope Michael may have serious questions to ask the Catholic Church – some of which we must all struggle with – his answer is wrong. Yet the documentary shows a person who is seriously seeking to live his faith.
Anyway, watch the film!











