Mike O’Maera reports in the NCR of the Kenyan Bishops’ Conference celebrating Lent and the Year of Mercy in a very practical way. Could it be an example for European and U.S. Bishops’ Conferences to copy and lessen their use of the year as a drive to get people back into the confessional?
Michael O’laughlin reports in www.cruxnow.com/ on a pastoral letter of Bishop Mitchell T. Rozanski of Springfield. The bishop is seeking forgiveness.
““There are many people hurting in our Catholic community from the pain caused by our past failings as a diocese, as well as the grievous actions of some who ministered in our church ……… there are others who have distanced themselves because they feel unwelcomed. The reasons here can vary, but key among them are race and cultural differences, a sense of gender inequality as well as sexual orientation,”
““I ask your forgiveness,”
Pádraig McCarthy shares his thoughts on the film Spotlight
Stan Mellett calls for a little thinking ‘outside the box’ when it comes to celebrating God’s mercy and forgiveness.
“How are we to celebrate the mystery and miracle of our forgiveness?” Stan argues that in the past we got it wrong. “God was a hard taskmaster; grudgingly would forgive but all the conditions had to be met. What a travesty of the Gospel! What an abuse of Church authority!”
“Any hope that the faithful and the unfaithful will once again wait in queue to whisper their ‘sins’ in a box, behind a curtain or in a private encounter, is, I think, remote.”
“Why hesitate to celebrate forgiveness for congregations in one liturgical celebration? “
Chris McDonnell suggests that the Washing of Feet on Holy Thursday is in danger of being seen as “seen as a liturgical dumb show with little meaning other than a mimed re-enactment of the gospel of John.”
“…we shouldn’t regard the Washing of Feet as an action related only to the liturgy of Holy Thursday, but rather as an action that can and should be shared on other occasions of prayer………. The Washing of Feet is an action of gentle kindness, an act of service and an intimate act of love …..We shape communities not by being the audience at events but by our actions in a shared act of love. Messy, untidy, with water spills during washing and the drying of feet with a towel afterwards, but that’s life, that’s how it is. .”
Seán McDonagh continues to draw our attention to the wealth of knowledge and teaching there is to be gleaned from ‘Laudato Si’ and to the urgency of Pope Francis’ message.
“Coral reefs, for example, have declined by 40 percent worldwide. This has been caused by climate-change warming of the oceans and deforestation in the tropics. Even though they constitute only 1 per cent of the ocean seabed, coral reefs are home to 25 percent of the species of the ocean.”
“there is time for humans to halt the damage with effective programmes limiting the exploitation of the oceans.”
Robert Mickens casts a critical eye on some of the planned events for the Holy Year of Mercy.
To say he is not impressed might be to understate his view.
Looking at two events, the commissioning of ‘missionaries of mercy’ and the displaying of the bodies of Saint Leopold Mandić and Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina for public veneration he says “Both of them are aimed, fundamentally, at one thing — getting people to go back to confession, a practice most Catholics gave up a long, long time ago. …… this is one verdict of the “sensus fidelium” that it seems the pope does not want to acknowledge.”
The Holy Year of Mercy was announced “at a time when the world has never been more aware of its divisions or more uncertain about how to resolve its seemingly irresolvable conflicts and heal its apparently incurable wounds; when it has never been so incapable of achieving peace and bringing about reconciliation.
The Holy Year is the pope’s attempt to help the world — but even more so the church — find the solution to this impossible situation. And he is convinced that it will only be done when people allow themselves to be healed by God’s mercy and then, in turn, offer it to others; when they allow themselves to be forgiven and, in turn, begin forgiving others.”
Mickens states that most reasonable Catholics — Italians included — disagree with the need for such props and gimmicks the jubilee committee is using to promote the Holy Year.”
John Shea addresses an open and challenging letter to Cardinal Maradiaga, and to the other members of the Council of Cardinals, asking they consider again attitudes towards women in the church.
John Shea is an Augustinian theologian in Boston,
Sean McDonagh keeps the teaching and insights of ‘Laudato Si’ before us.
“The destruction of biodiversity is a disaster for planet earth. Scientists now estimate that 100,000 species become extinct each year through deforestation, poaching and pollution. The current rate of extinction is estimated to be 1000 times what it would be in the absence of human intervention.”
But all is not bad news. Sean writes that “Amid all the gloom, there is a flicker of hope through targeted breeding programmes.”
Paul Graham OSA reviews Gabriel Daly’s, “The Church: Always in Need of Reform”.
He says of it ‘I expected to find an intellectual outlook that had become passé, full of the thoughts of an old man unable to accept that the theological frontline has moved on. Quite the contrary, in fact. This book is a distillation of the best of liberal Catholic thought, expressed clearly and with conviction.’
Brendan Hoban, in his Western People column, counsels against the temptation of directing people how to vote in referendum or general election. “Been there, done that in the last two centuries. It made little sense then. It makes even less now.”
“Telling people from the pulpit what to do in respect of a constitutional referendum or, even implicitly, who to vote for (or not to vote for) would do incredible damage not just to the cause espoused but to the Catholic Church”
Sean O’Conaill raises some very relevant questions about “the dichotomy of ‘secular and ‘religious’ “.
“In Ireland a militant secularism is obviously bent on ‘binding’ together all those alienated from the remnants of the ‘Catholic state’ into a significant political constituency.”
But Sean asks “How exactly can something so obviously evangelical, pacifically inclined, moralistic, charismatic, ‘binding’ – and salvational – not qualify as a ‘religion’? “
Seamus Ahearne draws on the experiences of varied people, ‘the chorus line in church life’, because they ‘are the ones that help us create a different model of priest and church.’
Fr. Anthony Ruff writes in his praytellblog.com about the change of rules concerning the washing of feet on Holy Thursday.
The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments now says that female feet may be washed!
Anthony asks ‘is too much being made about a rather insignificant matter?’
We could add why has it taken Rome so long to catch up with what has been common practice in most parishes for many years.
The Council of Priests of Dublin Diocese commissioned a report by Towers Watson to estimate the number of active Priests in the Archdiocese of Dublin in 2030 and estimate the Mass attendance numbers and number of people presenting for sacraments in 2030.
The report having made this estimate then puts forward some suggested ways of coping with the projected situation. These suggestions are to be discussed by the Council of priests.
How similar is it to projections made by others dioceses?
Are there any new imaginative suggestions as to how the Church in Ireland should respond to the impending virtual disappearance of priests from most communities?
Loup Besmond de Senneville writing in globalpulsemagazine.com draws our attention to the fact that not all bishops or bishops’ conferences take the same approach or strategies when dealing with state authorites or pressing social issues.
Gerry Heffernan, writing from Brisbane, invites each one of us to express our solidarity with the Christians of the Middle East by joining in some way with Chaldean Christians who in accordance with their liturgical tradition are preparing to observe the so-called “fast of Nineveh” (Bautha of Ninwaye).
The Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans, Luis Raphael I, has invited all the faithful of the Chaldean Church to pray and live abstinence from food in order to ask the Lord for the return of the gift of peaceful coexistence in Iraq and throughout the troubled region of the Middle East.
Brian Eyre, reflecting on his own experience, asks ‘Should the modus operandi of Married Priests be the same as that of Celibate Priests?’
Brain suggests they should have a different focus but many of his suggestions may have equal validity for all priests, married or celibate. ‘If they are to make a significant contribution to the life of the church let them be more people orientated and less church buildings orientated.’
Brendan Hoban, in his Western People column, comments on the recent publicly expressed differences between Archbishop Diarmuid Martin and Bishop Eamonn Walsh in relation to comments made by Eamon Walsh at the funeral of bishop Dermot O Mahony.
“Not so long ago bishops never contradicted each other. It wasn’t just regarded as bad form; it was breaking a golden rule because bishops never disagreed with each other – at least in public.”
“But now Pope Francis has brought a refreshing air of realism into the Church, where freedom of speech makes possible an adult debate for the first time in more than half a century. So bishops (and priests and people) can now say what they want – with the Pope’s imprimatur.”
Now that we’re as good as done with Christmas for another year is it time we evaluate how and when we celebrate the birth of Jesus?
Just before Christmas, Father William Grimm writing in globalpulsemagazine.com asked was it time to drop Christmas. “We could re-adopt the ancient multifaceted feast of Epiphany. Or, we could just move the celebration of the Nativity to some other point on the calendar.”
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