Author: Mattie Long

We are Church present a Zoom event with Amanda Dillon on the topic of “Lydia, Phoebe and the women of the Early Christian Churches”. Monday 25 May 2020 7.30 p.m….

Joe Mulvaney questions the use of the imagery of sheep and shepherd in the modern world for the type of ministry that is now required.
“there are lots of alternative words and concepts which could be used more meaningfully today e.g. servant leader, influencer, inspirer, animator, coordinator of parish services, moderator, facilitator, Christian community leader for shepherd and People of God or Friends of Jesus instead of sheep. You have many better words.” ….. “We Catholics are honest people. Let us speak out for reform in the Catholic Church using every modern means available to us.”

Chris McDonnell in The Catholic Times contrasts the picture of nurses celebrating in 1945 at the end of World War 2 to current images of, often young, hospital staff clad in PPE, administering comfort and care to their patients in the ICUs of our hospitals.

A report in Global Sisters Report outlines grave discomfort being expressed by many in the Catholic church in the U.S.A. at the expressions of admiration for President Trump’s leadership by Cardinal Dolan. It would appear that many women religious are offering leadership on this issue.
” ….. while politicians look for votes by saying the right thing, a Christian has got to stand in the shoes of immigrants,” she paraphrased. “I expect that from our leadership — not this pandering to power.”

The Government has announced a plan for the phased lifting of restrictions that were introduced to help stop the spread of the corona virus.

Seamus Ahearne is wrestling with God, an angel or life itself.
Seamus can become distracted during the live streaming of Mass.
“The Virtual Mass is an Invitation into the life of a Community.  It is hospitable.  I should be gracious and respectful.  But the Sanctuary (of those churches) speaks aggressively.  I look around.  The contradictions of many Sanctuaries attacks my senses. The Re-Ordering that happened some fifty years ago shouts and sometimes even screams. There was the compromise effort. It wasn’t a re-ordering; it was a disordering. The old was kept. The new was added. It doesn’t work.  …  The utter clutter is confusing. Surely it is now time to get this right.”  

Dublin diocese Scripture Summer School will be held online.
The cost is €40. Each participant will receive access to all eighteen presentations with full notes and study questions as well as being able to take part in all five Zoom conferences. 

Liam Power, in daring to hope, reminds us that “in the midst of the chaos precipitated by this virus, we must struggle to discover some meaning, some basis for our hope.”

After an unanimous ruling by seven high court judges Cardinal George Pell will walk free from prison today after the High Court of Australia ruled he was wrongly jailed for child sexual abuse.

Helen Bond, a leading academic, explores the New Testament for clues to women’s involvement in Jesus’ ministry. 
Thanks to Paddy Ferry and to Mary Cullen who edits Open House. This article is in the current edition of Open House.
Helen Bond is Professor of Christian Origins and Head of School, Divinity at the University of Edinburgh.

Seamus Ahearne reports from his cocoon. “I wonder will those of us cocooned emerge as beautiful butterflies or their equivalent?”
“‘bread is broken in many different ways and is done daily.   Even in the lock up days of the cocooned. … ‘Bread is broken’ on the phone.  In the papers dropped in the door. In the messages. In the shared videos. In the sheer goodness of people.”

Chris McDonnell writes in the Catholic Times of Dorothy Day, the American Christian Socialist, who “asked questions that, at the time, society was unwilling to contemplate, questions of injustice that fell on deaf ears.
Many of those questions remain unanswered in our present days, now brought into sharp focus by the world-wide COVID crisis that is indifferent to race, colour or wealth, a crisis that ignores passport controls”

Seamus Ahearne reviews Forbidden: Fruit Life and Catholicism in Contemporary Ireland
by Declan Henry.
“I think his Book could be a serious challenge for Reflection during these times. As a Church, we have much to do. to face a new world and to find a new place in that world.”

Paul Moses reports in commonwealmagazine.org on a joint act of prayerful solidarity between Catholic and Muslim in the west of Ireland as a response to the corona virus pandemic.
Sadly, but no longer surprisingly, it drew a backlash of bigotry from some people.
But “We never know if the seeds we plant will sprout. But even if they fail, we don’t stop planting.”

Fr. Jim Sabak, OFM has a thought provoking article on praytellblog.com
“It is always God who acts in and through sacramental encounter, the ordained serving as instruments to gather the Church together for the purpose of encountering God’s activity. In these days, this experience must take place beyond the usual sphere of ritual and rubric. Anything else serves only to limit our vital experience of God’s forgiveness, mercy, and love.”

Chris McDonnell in his Catholic Times column wonders how life might be changed when we eventually return to the light from the current darkness we find ourselves in.
“… the consequent life in faith of our Christian community will be fundamentally altered by our current experience.
We might resume familiar patterns but we will come to them as changed people. The shock of the new will be unavoidable. Faith will have been tested by experience and the well-worn path we have happily followed will be lost in the stones and bushes of the hedge-row. The real challenge will be to maintain our experience of inter-dependence, the realization that there is such a thing as Society, that we need each other”.

Brendan Hoban says that “The corona virus has robbed us of many things, including our freedom and almost our hope, but the experience of dealing with the death and funeral obsequies of those we love adds an unconscionable burden at the present time.”

Seamus Ahearne has time on his hands as he waits to metamorphose from his cocoon. However he wonders “what will emerge for us as Church”….”Our creative juices can be sharpened over these weeks and months.  No longer will it matter if we have female deacons or priests or celibates.  We will be on call to answer the needs.  And those needs will be different and new.”

Sean McDonagh writes about the current corona virus pandemic.
“History teaches us that pandemics can change things dramatically. ….. Covid-19 will also change history dramatically.”
“The ways humans destroy much of the natural world and engage in factory farming is based on the fallacy that what we do to the natural world will not have a negative impact on human health and well-being. Covid-19 tells us that this untrue.”