What does it mean to be Catholic today? – We Are Church Ireland

4 Comments

1. View the VIDEO of Fr Roy Donovan’s fearless talk to We Are Church on Youtube: https://youtu.be/fpMjDwNQOnY

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2. Thanks, Colm Holmes, for that great video. Everything Fr Roy says is right, but I can hear the clericalist voices dismissing it. I wonder if some of them are still saying, “You don’t change a winning team”! I paused at 29.00 to say AMEN about the oppressive new translations.

   Unwise to give a shout-out to the Korean film Parasites without having seen it. It’s a morally very dubious piece. My impression is that the social comment of the film is a fatuous pretext for a nasty celebration of deception, theft, murder, all for fun. I see people lauding it for production values, the sort of thing one might learn in film school, comparing it with Hitchcock in this respect. I don’t think it has anything like Hitchcock’s cinematic magic.

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3. I see “Parasite” comes flanked by pedagogic commentaries, which to my mind do not remove the suspicion of meretriciousness.

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ci-gFovSJf0

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kx-gSK2C2Q

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhEgGxaeCqM

   PS The “visitation” of US nuns was not done by the CDF, but they did do an “assessment” of the leadership, which was a distinct process.

   “At a Dec. 16 Vatican press conference, Cardinal João Braz de Aviz, the prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, presented his congregation’s response to the report and explained that the 2009-2012 visitation was initiated because women religious are “experiencing challenging times.” There was a need to “gain deeper knowledge” of their contributions, he said, as well as the difficulties that “threaten the quality of their religious life” and, for some, their very existence.

   “The visitation, not to be confused with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s four-year doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), was an unprecedented and enormous task, involving 341 religious institutes and approximately 50,000 women religious. It did not include cloistered nuns, but the Vatican stressed that its outcome is addressed to the Church’s pastors and faithful as well as women religious themselves.”

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4. Roy Donovan, is a breath of fresh air within a staid Catholic Church.
   He identifies the growth and consolidation of clericalism , as Pope Francis constantly reiterates , as a man made structure which has fostered injustices in the Church such as the exclusion of women from ministry .
   He states that priests have been taught to consider themselves as the ‘ special ones ‘ while the priesthood of the non – ordained is disregarded.
   This hierarchical gap is reinforced by the practice of priests being called ‘ fathers’ while lay- people are identified as their ‘ children ‘ – both descriptions totally unacceptable in our 21 century as these titles reinforce inequality .
   A fist step to dismantle clericalism which creates a barrier between priests and people would be to eliminate the practice of calling priests ‘fathers’ and to address them by the names they received, like the rest of us, at Baptism.
   This alone would not dismantle clericalism but would help to create a sense of equality and mutual respect between priests and the non-ordained people of God.
   Sincerely,
   Brendan Butler

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