Year: 2018

The ACP has written to the Irish bishops and calls for a National Assembly to discuss ‘The Reform and Renewal of the Catholic Church in Ireland’.
It also calls for a ‘constructive’ engagement with the bishops that would also be realistic, ongoing, coherent in terms of time-scale and commitment, and above all that it would engage with key critical issues.

Tony Flannery gives a brief report of his recent trip to the U.S.A. “While the U.S. Church is deeply divided, there are some real signs of light.”

Seamus Ahearne writes in this November of death; war, accident, murder; “the news is rotten with criminality; with stabbings; with shootings; with gangland outrages……….I think the culture of faith has to be rediscovered……However, every day is a privileged day. Every day is full of life, despite the dying. Every day is full of surprises. Every day throws around those ‘rumours of angels.’”

At the world remembers the horrors and savagery of war this weekend Pádraig McCarthy draws our attention to an appeal made by Enda McDonagh of St. Patrick’s College Maynooth and Stanley Hauerwas of Duke Divinity School, North Carolina for an abolition of war.
The appeal is as valid now as it was when written in 2002

Saints in November 01 November All Saints Day This feast began in the East to commemorate all martyrs and was progressively adopted in the West. Celebrated on this day in…

Fr Michael Ryan  of St James Cathedral Seattle U.S.A. posted a statement on the cathedral website about the latest mass shooting in that fractured land.
“… the brutal attack on worshippers in Pittsburgh was an attack not only on our Jewish brothers and sisters who for far too long have been the victims of the most vicious forms of bigotry and hatred imaginable, it is also an attack on all people whose right to worship God according to their conscience and their tradition came under attack ….”

A group of German, Austrian, and Swiss church people have come together to make an appeal for “pastoral conversion”.
This group have issued a ”mission manifesto” because they say the Church in Germany, Austria and Switzerland is about to cease to play any significant role in society in the years to come.
“ We are aware of the fact that our home countries have become mission territories … We are ready for mission. We wish that our countries may find Jesus. We extend our invitation to everybody who wants to join us in a committed wave of prayer. We wish to bring together all those who have the courage to take extraordinary steps.”

A visit to the Botanic Gardens gets Seamus Ahearne musing “The beauty of the day; the sun; the shadow; the fading colours of the trees; the flowers, was magnificent. It was indeed another book of Scripture. God was walking in that garden.”

Report on the Annual General Meeting 2018

Chris McDonnell comments on the current Synod of Bishops in Rome in his article in the Catholic Times. “although young people are there to observe and contribute, they will have no voting power when push comes to shove. Much will depend on how good the assembled clerics are at listening, how much their hearing will be conditioned by pre-determined views, how open they are to the realities that face young people.”

The National Catholic Reporter carries a robust editorial on Cardinal Ouellet’s response to Archbishop Viganò. It challenges the role of those U.S. catholics “whose primary ambition, it seems, is to convince the rest of us that the Christian Gospel was actually promulgated to justify the most extreme expressions of American-style capitalism.”
It concludes “The work ahead will require more than bluster and misappropriated slogans. It will require accessing the deepest levels of our sacramental tradition. It will require the imposition of unprecedented accountability from bishops. It will also require bishops with the will to confront the toughest questions about how the clerical culture arrived at this point.”

An interesting report is carried in the National Catholic Reporter on who has voting rights at the Synod on youth.
It’s hard to believe no woman has the right to vote at the Synod on the 100th anniversary of the beginning of women achieving their right to vote in this part of the world.

Dr Gladys Ganiel, Research Fellow, Senator George J Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, Queen’s University Belfast commissioned a survey about the recent papal visit. The results have been released and are informative.
“For practicing Catholics, 39% said the main reason as to why they did not attend any of the events was because the travel/walk was too difficult, 22% said they were not interested and 18% said they disagreed with how the Church has handled abuse.”

Only 1% of those who did not attend any event put the reason down to the weather!

At the recent annual general meeting of the ACP Tim Hazelwood outlined the continuing supportive role the ACP plays for many priests.

Homily of Pope Francis, St Peter’s Square, Sunday, 14 October 2018.
“Let us ask for the grace always to leave things behind for love of the Lord: to leave behind wealth, leave behind the yearning for status and power, leave behind structures that are no longer adequate for proclaiming the Gospel, those weights that slow down our mission, the strings that tie us to the world.”

A presentation on the topic of the retirement of priests was given by Mattie Long at the recent AGM of the Association of Catholic Priests.