F,CCLESIASTICAL tipsters, I hear, are putting their money on Bishop Charles Grant to take over the Northampton Diocese. The See became vacant five weeks ago when Bishop Parker retired.
Bishop Grant, who has been the diocesan auxiliary, is 61-years-old and he's been a priest for 32 of them. He studied for the priesthood at St. Edmund's College and then did a spell at the Gregorian University in Rome. Parish work followed until his consecration in 1961.
Northampton is a large diocese and the chances are that the new bishop will have two or three auxiliaries with special responsibilities for allotted areas. This would be in line with the recent re-organisation carried out in the Westminster and Lancaster Dioceses where Bishops Butler, Casey and Pearson now take care of Hertfordshire, Middlesex and Lake District respectively.
With Rynne and Reason
OF all the burning books which have been written about the Vatican Council, those by Xavier Rynne were the most enigmatic. Who was this ghost with the inside knowledge? A consortium of Council Fathers? A renegade priest? Cardinal 0. himself, perhaps?
Fr. Peter Hcbblethwaite, S.J., assistant editor of The Month, thinks he's cracked the nom-de-plume. In the current issue he writes: "On internal evidence alone, one can get pretty close to the identity of Xavier Rynne—style, spelling and admiration for Walter Lippman confirm this."
Xavier Rynne was no ghost but a substantial someone
who was around in Rome, listened, took notes, talked to everyone. "Who then," Fr. Hebblethwaite asks, "showed an intense interest in the Council, knew all the gossip, followed the manoeuvres and yet wrote very little or not as much as one would expect from someone so well informed?"
The accusing finger points to Fr. Francis Xavier Murphy, a Redeptorist living in Rome. His rare articles on the Council betray the same outlook as Rynne, says Fr. Hcbblethwaite. He thinks that file in the Vatican archives, marked "Rynne, Xavierius", can now be closed and we have the answer to the question put familiarly: