Blog

Exploring our parishes today – Conference of Laity and Priests of the Diocese of Ossory

An interesting address by Dermot Farrell, Bishop of Ossory, at the Conference with Laity and Priests in the Diocese of Ossory;
“Pope Francis is constantly putting his synodal vision of the church before us. The question he is asking, and that we should ask ourselves, is what kind of church is God calling the priests and all Catholics to be in the longer term – perhaps less self-referential and more a community of missionary disciples, less clerical and more synodical, “……

“We have fallen off a cliff edge in regard to vocations to the priesthood.   Many speak of a crisis in this regard…….This time of reduced numbers may well afford us an opportunity to be creative and to reimagine the institutional church.”

Rushing back to the past

Seamus Ahearne and his congregation find inspiration in the sporting figures of the past week and get a little distracted by royalty.
He wonders because the newly appointed Irish soccer team manager Mick McCarthy is back. “He once was the past. Now he is the future.” With regard to church Seamus tells us “We cannot get lost in the past. The past has to be distilled. The best has to be retained. The packaging can be discarded.”

A Bird with a Broken Wing Cannot Fly

Chris McDonnell, writing recently in the Catholic Times, said of the U.S. mid term elections, “What of the future? How will the Democracy of Immigrants that forms the United States rebuild trust and civility, what is required of each and every citizen?”
We wonder when we hear a President speak of ‘beautiful barbed wire’ being strung out along a border.
Chris also adds “Just as there is this fracture in our public life, for not only the US but other Western Democracies are also under threat, so too within our Christian community are fault lines and tensions apparent.”

ACP Letter to Irish Bishops

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.

‘If we only have love…….’ 

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.’”

An Appeal to Abolish War

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

The Tree of Life Synagogue, Pittsburgh

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 ….”

Mission Manifesto

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.”

When it comes to talking

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.”

Leadership vacuum in Church in the U.S.A. causes problems world wide

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.”

Papal Visit – What people think

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!

Homily of Pope Francis at Mass of Canonisations, 14 October 2018

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.”

Select a category in the sidebar for more posts

Select a category in the sidebar for more posts