Liturgy Preparation - Association Of Catholic Priests

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Brendan Hoban: Sometimes you can have too many rituals
October 3 2022
Sean O'Conaill
Re the meaning and purpose of ritual, is it sensible to suppose that Jesus intended the ritual of the Eucharist, the Mass, to be an end in itself - the central and definitive and sufficient Christian 'obligation'? Was it not instead the extra-liturgical obligation of practical love of one another to which his followers were called - not by the Holy Thursday ritual but by the Good Friday fulfilment of it, which was NOT a mere ritual but an actual and total self-giving? I have yet to hear a homily in which the celebrant would insist upon the primacy of loving Christian action in the world as the only convincing evidence that the Mass has a meaning and purpose that goes beyond itself, beyond mere repetition of more and more Masses. The disconnect between ritual and practical self-giving is virtually total, to the extent that we are now sometimes assured that if there are no more priests to say Mass there will be no Church either - in defiance of Matthew Ch. 25 where Jesus does not mention ritual at all but insists instead upon 'caritas' - mutual care and love, and especially care of the least fortunate. Paradoxically it is that clericalist elevation of ritual above practical Christian action in the world outside that most threatens the Mass - because it leaves unanswered and unanswerable the most obvious question: what is the point of it all?
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Donal Dorr: SYNODALITY AND THE ORDINATION OF WOMEN
October 4 2022
Sean O'Conaill
If it was their ordained and stipendiary status that prevented so many from being completely honest within the church, don't we then have to question whether that status is compatible with the Christian obligation to be honest always? As to the making of decisions, so many have made the decision to tune out of everything to do with the church that one now must wonder if the remnant that is left is where the Lord is now likely to be busiest - given his promise to be instead with the sheep that are lost? I have a friend in his eighties who still goes to church but has great sympathy also with another acquaintance who has ‘cut out the middleman’ completely. My guess is that many of us are in that liminal situation - very aware and wary now of the power of all institutions to corrupt. So far organised synodality has only been a spasm - while all of us are already ‘ordained’ for mere friendship, as well as honesty. As the clerical institution dithers, on the brink of collapse, one has to wonder if any higher form of stipendiary ordination is truly needed or credible now, when the self-imposed protocols that come with that seem to lie at the root of the elusiveness of transparency and accountability. Matthew 20: 25-27 seems to predict the situation we now have, a radical 'flattening' of the imperial church, and a Christian diaspora that is aghast at what that imperial church has done to alienate so many from the very 'word' it is supposed to be advancing. So don't we now need to be radically honest about 'ordination'?
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Donal Dorr: SYNODALITY AND THE ORDINATION OF WOMEN
October 4 2022
Soline Humbert
"I know that the silence or caution of so many priests and theologians, including myself, is a form of internalised oppression..." Yes indeed, and in my experience over the past 30 years, it is widespread and it runs very deep, often at an unconscious level. Men and women, filled with fear. Thank you to Donal Dorr for his courageous honesty in naming the damaging reality of what the violence of silencing has done to consciences and is still doing today in the church. Time to hear the Good News and let the internally oppressed go free! Where there is love, there is freedom.
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Brendan Hoban: Sometimes you can have too many rituals
October 3 2022
Joe O'Leary
Queen Elizabeth, in her latter very maternal and sunny years, was happy to play along, arranging a parachute stunt with Bond at a Jubilee event and a video of receiving him at the palace. At least she did not do Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter stunts. How long a way she had come from the time when royal patronage injected forbidding starchiness into cultural products such as Britten's Gloriana. Rowan Williams relates his surprise to find the Queen so approachable and lovable (in the post-Diana and post-Queen Mother time). Hearing he was going to Iraq, she advised he wear a disguise as a safety precaution, 'but it can't be a beard, as you already have one.' Coincidentally I just heard the voice of Boris Johnson, his hearers simply rocking with delight, -- such a relief from the ill-concealed gloom of the new PM and her Chancellor of the Exchequer.
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Brendan Hoban: Sometimes you can have too many rituals

Donal Dorr: SYNODALITY AND THE ORDINATION OF WOMEN

Donal Dorr: SYNODALITY AND THE ORDINATION OF WOMEN

Brendan Hoban: Sometimes you can have too many rituals

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