November 4 2017 -

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1 Oct 2022 – Saturday of Week 26
October 1 2022
Soline Humbert
Saint Thérèse would have enjoyed Sr Joan Chittister's commentary on Job's daughters being given both a name and an inheritance! http://acatholicwomansplace.blogspot.com/2013/01/joan-chittisters-jobs-daughters.html?m=1
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Diocesan boundaries set down in 12th century unfit for 21st century
September 27 2022
Sean O'Conaill
" ...it is unthinkable that an Irish synodal process would not engage with the question of restructuring dioceses when there is such an urgent need to do so." More urgent than discovering, after over half-a-century of non-synodality, what vital faith still has us in the same boat together and figuring out how we are to stem the exodus of the young? The clerical resources available for that short-term 'go' at synodality in 2021-22 were obviously stretched to the limit, and, unless we see an initiative this autumn re that crucial faith formation issue, 'synodality' could be merely a memory by the spring of 2023. It wasn't the diocesan structure that started the rot, so restructuring just now, when the end-point of the 'shrink' is still unknown, may not strike many as the topmost issue. That doesn't preclude a sub-group of enthusiasts such as Dr Duffy being delegated the task, obviously.
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Brendan Hoban: Religious faith was the bedrock for the Queen
September 23 2022
Sean O’Conaill
Given that only a sincere faith could have allowed Queen Elizabeth II to stick so solidly to her constitutional duties, to surmount the tragedies and very public humiliations of close family members - and even gracefully to address the challenge of a reconciliatory visit to Ireland - there was obviously a limit to the extent that she could truly ‘get’ Jesus’s message re the incompatibility of great wealth and the kingdom of heaven, or see that the institution she represented was an obvious handbrake on the ‘levelling up’ that the Tory party now claims to espouse. She was as much a prisoner of ‘the crown’ and its castles as an heiress to them. It is not therefore difficult to see why her observant faith coincided with the closure of over 1000 Anglican churches in Britain during her reign. How could the professed faith of a church so constitutionally constrained gain wider traction as a commitment also to social justice and equality? There too a clear discernment of the sins of pride and covetousness - the sins that undergird injustice - was historically off limits. But for an accident of history this conundrum could now be for an English Catholic hierarchy to resolve, and it would be that Catholic church that would find itself described by the UK left as ‘the Tory party at prayer’. Sooner or later it is for church leaders so situated to either put up with such constitutional constraints - and watch the faith and the Gospel itself lose credibility - or to see and to call out the historical compromise that lies at the root of the separation between a sincere egalitarianism and an observant Christian faith. An established Christian church is also an historically doomed church, because the essence of establishment is assent to social inequality and the moral inertia and hypocrisy of a privileged social elite. Would there ever have been a Karl Marx or an atheist backlash against Christendom if Christendom had ever been truly and deeply Christian? Our current Irish Catholic hierarchy may also be in deep historical trouble, but I doubt that they envy their counterparts in the Church of England.
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Brendan Hoban: Religious faith was the bedrock for the Queen
September 23 2022
Paddy Ferry
Brendan, an excellent and very fair appreciation of the late Queen Elizabeth, her life and, also, of the whole funeral process and ritual. Apparently, her faith was such that she knelt at her bedside every night --I presume until her legs would no longer allow her -- and prayed. How the whole process was handled from leaving Balmoral that Sunday to travel to Edinburgh --I stood among the throngs on Queensferry Road in Edinburgh and watched her pass by --until she was finally laid to rest in St. Georges chapel in Windsor was so impressive. Except for what you correctly referred to as "the stilted liturgy". The actual service in Westminister Abbey left me completely unimpressed. Was it really necessary to have the arcane language in the scripture readings, for example? Of course, we were told the whole thing had been in preparation for decades and it was all, probably, as she herself wished. But, I found what should have been so uplifting very disappointing.
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1 Oct 2022 – Saturday of Week 26

Diocesan boundaries set down in 12th century unfit for 21st century

Brendan Hoban: Religious faith was the bedrock for the Queen

Brendan Hoban: Religious faith was the bedrock for the Queen

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