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Roy Donovan reminds us that it was “the women who stood at the foot of the Cross when the men had fled”. He asks, “Pope Francis spoke eloquently about separating colonialism from the spread of the Good News at the pan-Amazon synod. What about separating male culture from the spread of the Good News?”

Seamus Ahearne is wondering if “We may have to learn new and different ways of celebrating Rituals.    I think the official Books don’t do it. But that is very true of much of our present Liturgies.”
” If only this time of desert, (of House Arrest) stirred the hunger within, for what really is essential to living life to the full.”

Chris McDonnell writes “The choice of where to pray and when to pray has come down to us through subsequent years; for now, this Spring, we have limited options.” and he reminds us of Teilhard de Chardin who found himself in the Ordos Desert in China in 1923, unable to offer the Eucharist and wrote “Since once again, Lord I have neither bread, nor wine, nor altar,
I will raise myself beyond these symbols, up to the pure majesty of the real itself. I your priest will make the whole earth my altar and on it will offer you all the labours and sufferings of the world.’

Gerard O’Connell and  Colleen Dulle report in americamagazine.org on the establishment by Pope Francis of a new commission to study the issue of the ordination of women deacons.

Tim Hazelwood is using the social distancing to reflect. “Now may be the opportunity for us to learn that we all are Church and that we must be Eucharist every day, of being thankful and believing that the risen Christ is with us.”

Maura O Shea writes of her perspective on the distancing, isolating, and close downs that have happened as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Brendan Hoban, in the Western People, writes about the absence of Holy Week Ceremonies this year.
“Church leaders are caught between their responsibility to give clear and appropriate guidance and the felt need of the people to celebrate the key events of the first Easter. But their (and our) moral responsibility is clear. The bottom line is that no compromise that might endanger health and life is acceptable.”

Dermod McCarthy draws our attention to an interesting webcast.

Seamus Ahearne has time to de-clutter and observe and write;
“it is the cleaners, the bin men, the shelf packers, the shop servers, the drivers of the lorries, the post people, the orderlies, the receptionists taking calls, the local nurses and doctors, the shoppers for the cocooned….. We need eyes to see and to appreciate and to be grateful….. if there is an outbreak of generosity and gratitude; Eucharist is happening.”

Suggestion – put a green branch on your door or window on Palm Sunday.

Pádraig McCarthy offers practical suggestions for an alternative style of Holy Week from the norm.

Daniel P Horan in the NCR writes on the closure of churches and the suspension of public acts of worship in this time of pandemic.
“we are all called upon to care for one another by taking extraordinary measures that includes the suspension of public worship, means learning to see our love of neighbor not only as an assent to “worldly” or “secular” medical wisdom, but also an actual exercise of our love of God. Each of the manifold ways we are sacrificing to love our neighbors — self-isolation, quarantining, tending to the sick at home, supporting first responders, avoiding public places, not hoarding supplies, working remotely and even not going physically to church buildings — is itself an expression of our love of God.”

Patsy McGarry writes in The Irish Times of priests under pressure to perform funeral Masses despite Covid-19 and of significant numbers of Irish Catholic priests cocooned in their homes as they are over 70.

Katie Ascough on catholicireland.net reports on a joint statement issued by the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church, Church of Ireland, Methodist Church in Ireland, Presbyterian Church in Ireland and the Irish Council of Churches.

Should Church buildings now be closed following the further severe restrictions announced last evening by An Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, and Minister for Health, Simon Harris?

Seamus Ahearne is reflecting on the imposed restrictions and like many is making discoveries about himself: “I need people! The empty house. The silence. The absence of banter. The non-visiting. The non-communion (2 metres).”
But there is also the awareness that “We have been given so much. We cannot take it for granted.  The virus tells us of this being one world and that we share a common world. We all belong. We all need each other.”

A proposal of how we can mark the occasion of Easter when we cannot gather to celebrate……
Any other practical ideas, in keeping with best practice Public Health guidelines?

Brendan Hoban, in his Western People column, says that our response to the corona virus pandemic “depends on how, as a people, we respond to the challenges facing us and whether our traditional ability to pull together to do what has to be done will serve us in the days and weeks and months ahead”

With the horrific death toll from the Coronavirus pandemic in Italy now rising towards 5,500 the Catholic News Agency reports that at least 60 Italian priests have died from COVID-19

Tony Flannery, in his own blog, cites the fact that scripture scholars are now saying much, and more, of what he was silenced for ten years ago. The difference is that there is now no problem with scholars expressing their thoughts and opinions and engaging in a healthy discussion of the topics involved.