September 18 2014 -

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18th September. Thursday, Week 24

The self-righteous and the repentant

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1 comments
Mon 15 Aug 2022 – The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
August 15 2022
sean walsh
"There was this shrine, as I recall. Oh, well known it was, locally... We walked the three miles, there and back. Out the country. ‘Summer’s day... Me still in short trousers, ‘boots that needed mending. Six miles in all. A killer... ‘Knelt for the Rosary. Nudging, gawking around, stifling a giggle... Every bead a penance... ‘Grass trodden underfoot by previous pilgrims. The tree and the hollow, the rock and the glade, the stream where we filled our bottles to carry home. Our salute to you wafting out on the warm, still air: Ave... Ave... Ave Maria... The Lourdes statue marking the ledge where you appeared... whenever it was, to whoever it was... reputedly. We had you to ourselves in those days - before you took off on a world tour... Holy Mary, Mother of God… And mine. My mother. Are you? Really?.. Hmmm. You came through it all with hardly a scratch, so they tell me. And now you’re on a direct line to Himself: easy access, unlimited credit, excellent equity, buoyant stock – in-in-interceding for us... All I’m asking is that you put in a good word for me - hoping you’ll understand, even if He doesn’t - so when the time comes I won’t be caught on the wrong foot..." - from Jenny One Two Three. My ebook...
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4 comments
Reposting from May 2022: John Wijngaards: We need a more democratic process of electing bishops.
August 12 2022
Sean O’Conaill
It's good, Paddy, to resume this here at last. Re. the difficulty over Luke 22: 20 : "This cup is the new covenant in my blood poured out for you" - and my earlier reference to 'a complete transformation of sacrifice'. Long before Rene Girard there were Christians who insisted that Jesus was non-violent, an advocate of 'suffering' - i.e. of putting up with the violence of others rather than reciprocating - and that teaching is quite explicit in 'turn the other cheek'. Yet maybe we need Girard now to unpack 'sacrifice' fully as a Christian concept. For me now the transition from a priesthood of 'evasion' - i.e. of the shedding of the blood of someone other than oneself - to the non-violent offering of oneself in service of, or defence of, others - is the clear trajectory of the biblical accounts. Never have I heard a priest point out the obvious stark difference between what Jesus did at the Passover in Jerusalem and what Abraham was on the point of doing to Isaac, but Girard makes that difference crystal clear. Is anyone else persuaded now of Girard's contention that the Gospel clearly illustrates the time-honoured political practice of scapegoating? That the powerful commonly combine at any time of crisis to blame some powerless individual or minority for 'all that's wrong' - and then to expel or exterminate those victims - happens over and over again in the historical record. Even following the holocaust of Jews and other minorities during WWII by the Nazis there was the pact between Churchill and Stalin at Yalta in 1945 which led to the handing over of thousands of 'White' Russians (those who had opposed the 'Reds', the Bolsheviks from 1917 and then allied with Germany in WWII) by the allies to Stalin's machine gunners. To read any detailed eye-witness accounts of that handover - which included women, children and infants - is to be turned to cold stone. See e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victims_of_Yalta Yet Girard's related proposal - that the archaic and universal practice of ritual sacrifice actually originated in and emerged from scapegoating - is even more fascinating. The 'structure' of both phenomena - i.e. the many against just one or against a weaker minority - and the intended consequence - the reconciliation of the main actors - is, he points out, the same. What's different of course is that scapegoating events are one-off events that are not predictable and a matter of regular routine in the way that religious rituals are. Also they are not seen as religious events by the main actors. Pilate, and, to a lesser extent Herod and Caiaphas, are resolving a one-off political problem that is threatening their own status. It is unlikely that they saw the execution of Jesus as a religious event - yet that is what happened, apparently because Jesus 'ritualised' what was about to happen to him. This is not conclusive evidence that ritual sacrifice necessarily arose in all cases from prior scapegoating events, but it is fascinating nevertheless. So is the fact that in the West we do not now typically practise ritual blood sacrifice. However, can we normally expect an ordained Catholic priest to point out that Jesus was not crucified for initiating the Eucharist, the Mass, on Holy Thursday, but for challenging the injustices and hypocrisies of a religious system? Were we ever told that following Jesus could involve doing what Jesus did by way of protesting against religious hypocrisy? Or was it always about attending Mass, even though, for Jesus, that was by far the safest thing he did? Even when it came to 'taking up one's own cross', was that ever interpreted in terms of making our own religious elite accountable - or was the (clerical) church not Holy as well as One, Catholic and Apostolic? That our own religious elite might be collaborating to conceal the suffering caused by clerical abuse - replicating the scapegoating (the transfer of consequences to someone else) that seems always to accompany all concentrations of power - was never supposed to come to light. Nevertheless, from a priesthood of evasion - in which someone other than the main actor, the priest, is made to bleed and suffer - to a priesthood in which the priest is also the victim who suffers and accepts the consequences of the sins of others: that is the extraordinary transition that occurs in the scriptural record. And so our own priesthood-of-the-ritual has suddenly lost social status, and power, as the real sufferings of victims of clerical abuse - children and women - come to light. So why are we still thinking it's all about whoever 'says Mass' - when what made Jesus a Christian priest was not the easy bit, the performance of a ritual, but the challenging of abusive power, in solidarity with those who suffer? To see this is to wonder if we need to completely revise our understanding of 'the church', and to relativise the gatherings of prestigious clerics, such as the universal Vatican synod of October 2023. After nearly four decades of revelation of cover-up, globally, have our bishops made themselves directly accountable yet?
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Reposting from May 2022: John Wijngaards: We need a more democratic process of electing bishops.
August 12 2022
Paddy Ferry
Joe,@2, thank you for such an excellent and well thought out -- as always -- response to my serious concerns about Hebrews and the origins of our tradition of priesthood. However, my serious concerns remain.
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2 comments
Bishop Fintan Gavin publishes pastoral letter transforming parishes in Cork & Ross into mission-centred faith communities
August 3 2022
Sean Macken
Matthew 9, 14-17 You cannot put new wind in old wineskins
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