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Technical Difficulties…
Please be advised that we are currently experiencing technical difficulties with posting the Daily Readings. Our webmaster has been advised… apologies for any inconvenience.
Seán Ó Conaill: The Church Needs a Whistle Blower’s Charter
“The question has to be asked as to why what is best, what demands hard work, is not the calling of every single person who takes on the job of…
ACP ZOOM: Synodal Pathway – What’s Next? with Julieann Moran, Tues 27 June 2023 @ 7.00pm. All welcome.
ACP Zoom guest speaker, Julieann Moran, General Secretary for the Synodal Pathway, will discuss where the Synodal Pathway (Ireland) and the Universal Synod are at present. Julieann has just returned…
Spiritfest 2019
Tim Hazelwood draws our attention to Spiritfest 2020.
The opening is an interesting talk by Dr. Marie Keenan on ‘Restorative Justice – Learning to Move On and Heal’Synodal Pathway Update: National Steering Committee Report plus Irish Synodal Pathway Research for the Development of a Facilitative Leadership Programme
From Julieann Moran, Irish Synodal Pathway: Dear friends, The first phase of the Synodal Pathway of the Catholic Church in Ireland is now complete. This two-year phase, interwoven with the…
Trying to Make Sense of Current Affairs
Seamus Ahearne wonders at recent happenings; ” are there any political saviours emerging that may bring hope to this mad crazy world? The chaos of the world presented to us in the stories of Advent may also prompt us to believe that hope and good sense can prevail. ”


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