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Deaf Shepherds

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.”

Real Leadership – Women speaking truth to power

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.”

Wrestling with God, an angel or life itself

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.”  

What’s another week?

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.”

“He, after all, is Christ.”

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”

Clericalism and the Pandemic

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.”

Light after Darkness

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”.

Much Ado About Nothing

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.”

How Covid-19 will shape the future?

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.”

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