Mersey Leven Catholic Parish
To be a vibrant Catholic Community
unified in its commitment
to growing disciples for Christ
Parish Priest: Fr Mike Delaney
Mob: 0417 279 437
Mob: 0417 279 437
Priest in Residence: Fr Phil McCormack
Mob: 0437 521 257
Mob: 0437 521 257
Postal Address: PO Box 362
Parish Office: 90 Stewart Street
(Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 10am - 3pm)
Office Phone: 6424 2783 Fax: 6423 5160
Email: merseyleven@aohtas.org.au
Secretary: Annie Davies / Anne Fisher
Pastoral Council Chair: Jenny Garnsey
Parish Mass times for the Month: mlcpmasstimes.blogspot.com.au
Weekly Homily Podcast: mikedelaney.podomatic.com
Parish Office re-opens on Tuesday 23rd January, 2018
OLOL Piety Shop will be closed until 4th February, 2018
Our Parish Sacramental Life
Baptism: Parents are asked to contact the Parish Office to make arrangements for attending a Baptismal Preparation Session and booking a Baptism date.
Reconciliation, Confirmation and Eucharist: Are received following a Family–centred, Parish-based, School-supported Preparation Program.
Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults: prepares adults for reception into the Catholic community.
Marriage: arrangements are made by contacting one of our priests - couples attend a Pre-marriage Program
Anointing of the Sick: please contact one of our priests
Reconciliation: Ulverstone - Fridays (10am - 10:30am)
Devonport - Saturday (5:15pm – 5:45pm)
Care and Concern: If you are aware of anyone who is sick or in need of assistance in the Parish please visit them. Then, if they are willing and give permission, could you please pass on their names to the Parish Office. We have a group of parishioners who are part of the Care and Concern Group who are willing and able to provide some backup and support to them. Unfortunately, because of privacy issues, the Parish Office is not able to give out details unless prior permission has been given.
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Eucharistic Adoration - Devonport: Every Friday 10am - 12noon, concluding with Stations of the Cross and Angelus
Benediction with Adoration - Devonport: First Friday of each month.
Legion of Mary: Wednesdays 11am Sacred Heart Church Community Room, Ulverstone
Prayer Group: Charismatic Renewal – Monday evenings 7pm
– 9:30pm Community Room Ulverstone
Healing Mass sponsored by CCR will be celebrated at St Mary’s Church Penguin on Thursday 8th February, 2018
Archdiocesan Website: www.hobart.catholic.org.au for news, information and details of other Parishes.
Parish Prayer
Heavenly Father,
and calling us to serve as your disciples.
as we use our gifts to serve you.
as we strive to bear witness
to the Gospel and build an amazing parish.
Amen.
Weekday Masses 22nd - 26th January 2018
Monday: No Mass
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe - Francis de Sales
Thursday: 12noon Devonport - Conversion of St Paul
9:00am Devonport Day
Next Weekend 27th - 28th January 2018
Saturday Vigil: 6:00pm Penguin
Devonport
Sunday Mass: 8:30am Port Sorell
Your prayers
are asked for the sick: Vic Slavin, Rex Bates, David Welch, Phil Tuckett & …
Let us pray for those who have died recently: Graham Gregson, Josefina-Daguman Montiel, Janelle Payne, Paul Rush, Roger Foot, John Tooth, Tony McKenna, Joan Slater, Georgia Lewtas, Fr Tim O’Toole CP, Bob Wallace, Sr. Joy Hanrahan, Tony Marshall, Zoe Duncan, Margaret Devine, Ken Denison, Donald Cooper.
Let us pray
for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 17th – 23rd
January
May they Rest in Peace
Readings this week – 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B)
I read this text quietly from the heart.
I allow words or phrases to touch
me.
I let myself be drawn by what moves me.
It is the living Word, the
Good News that Christ himself gives.
As I read, I might be impressed by the response of the disciples to the call
of Jesus from the shore.
It is whole-hearted.
Perhaps I am struck by the pace of the text.
Jesus says the time has come
and calls on the people to repent and believe.
He calls the disciples and
they follow immediately.
I ponder on the ready trust they show in Jesus
and on the trust he shows in them.
I might like to reflect upon the same Christ calling my name from the
shore of my own life.
How does his voice sound?
Does it ring clear or does it have to compete with other voices
demanding my attention, investment, and commitment?
How does this voice console me?
I end my prayer by pondering this message of Good News.
I talk to Christ in my own words, asking that it sink down into the deepest
part of my heart and soul; that I might really believe and trust.
Our Father ...
Readings next week – 4th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B)
Since
last week’s Ramblings we have had a conversation with Sharon Brewer, from the
National Centre for Evangelisation, the facilitator of our Reflection and
Hospitality Day, and the decision has been made to condense the process into
one day rather than two. The final outline is yet to be confirmed but we will
be making known all details next weekend.
Please
take care on the roads
Forming
a Parish Pastoral Team (PPT) for Mersey Leven
LENTEN PROGRAM
Contemplation
This year as we explore the places in which God’s presence
has been ignored or forgotten, you may be challenged at times. I may say things
that you disagree with or that make you uncomfortable. And that’s okay! If
we’re not at least a bit uncomfortable, we’re probably not really thinking or
growing. Don’t rely on my authority. Let the wisdom of Scripture, your faith
tradition, and your own lived experience teach you.
Most importantly, I invite you to hold my many words in the
spaciousness of contemplative practice, letting the meditations work on you
more than you work on understanding them. The deepest truths can’t be grasped
at the level of intellect. Christianity can’t just be based on beliefs. It only
becomes authentic and transformative through experience and practice, when
head, heart, and body are all open and receptive.
As I said earlier this week, you can’t earn God’s image or
prove yourself worthy of God. Feeling God’s presence is simply a matter of
awareness. Of enjoying the now. Deepening one’s presence. There are moments
when it happens. Then life makes sense. Contemplative practice helps us become
habituated to this way of being, opening ourselves to presence in the ordinary
and humdrum.
Once I can see the Mystery here—and trust the Mystery even
in this piece of clay that I am, in this moment of time that I am—then I can
also see it in you. I am eventually able to see the divine image in all things.
Finally, the seeing is one. How you see anything is how you will see
everything.
This seeing happens in graced, momentary glimpses and
through intentional, lifelong practice. Each Saturday I’ll share an invitation
to a different form of contemplation or meditation in hopes that you’ll find
one or more that resonate. There are so many ways to open ourselves to
communion and presence, from sitting in silence to drumming, dancing, singing,
and being in nature. Sometimes it might sound silly, but don’t discount the
power and depth of a simple, even childlike experience. To begin, click here to
watch three short videos on the meaning and importance of practice-based
spirituality and explore several contemplative practices.
Adapted from Richard
Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (The Crossroad
Publishing Company: 2003), 57-58.
For Further Study:
Recently I received a letter from a man who shared that he was still deeply haunted by a story he’d heard in grade school many years before. One of his religion teachers had read them a story about a priest who went to visit a childhood friend. While staying with his friend, the priest noticed that, while his friend was cheerful and affable enough, he seemed to be harboring some deep, residual sadness. When he asked his friend about it his friend confessed that he “had lost his salvation” because he had felt a call to priesthood when he was young but had chosen instead to marry. Now, he felt, there was no existential redemption from that. He had had a vocation and lost it and, with that, also lost for good his chance at happiness. Though happily enough married, he felt that he would bear forever the stigma of having been being unfaithful in not accepting his God-given vocation.
I was raised on stories like that. They were part of the Catholicism of my youth. We were taught to believe that God marked out a certain vocation for you, that is, to be a priest, a sister, a married person, or a single person in the world, and if you didn’t accept that, once you knew your calling, then you had “missed” or “lost” your vocation and the consequence would an abiding sadness and even the danger of missing heaven. Such were the vocation stories of my youth, and, truth be told, I went to the seminary to become a priest with that lingering as a shadow in my mind. But it was only a shadow. I didn’t enter religious life and priesthood out of fear, though some moral fears did play a part in it, as they should. Fear can also be a healthy thing.
But it can also be unhealthy. It’s not healthy to understand both God and your vocation in terms that can have you missing out on happiness and salvation on the basis on singular choice made while you are still young. God doesn’t work like that.
It’s true that we are called by God to a vocation which we are meant to discern through conscience, through community, through circumstance, and through the talents that we’ve been given. For a Christian, existence does not preceded essence. We’re born with a purpose, with a mission in life. There are many clear texts in scripture on this: Jesus, praying for entire nights to know his Father’s will; Peter conscripted on a rock to led by a belt that will take him where he would rather not go; Paul being led into Damascus and instructed by an elder as to his vocation; Moses being called to do a task because he saw the suffering of the people; and all of us being challenged to use our talents or be stripped of them. We’re all called to mission and so each of us has a vocation. We’re not morally free to live our lives simply for ourselves.
But God doesn’t give us just one chance which if we miss it or turn down will leave us sad forever. No. God opens a new door every time we close one. God gives us 77×7 chances, and more after that, if needed. The question of vocation is not so much a question of guessing right (What very specifically was I predestined for?) but rather a question of giving oneself over in faith and love to the situation that we’ve chosen (or which more often than not has by circumstance chosen us). We should not live in unhealthy fear about this. God continues to love us and desire our happiness, even when we don’t always follow to where we are ideally called.
Recently I heard a homily in a church in which the priest compared God to a GPS, a Global Positioning System, that is, that computerized instrument, complete with human voice, that countless people have today in their cars and which gives them ongoing instructions on how to get to their destination. One of its features is this: No matter how many times you disregard or disobey its command, the voice never expresses impatience, yells at you, or gives up on you. It simply says “Recalculating”. Sooner or later, no matter how many times you disregard it, it gets you home.
Delightful as is that image, it’s still but a very weak analogy in terms of understanding God’s patience and forgiveness. None of us should be haunted, long-term, by sadness and fear because we feel that we’ve missed our vocation, unless we are living a selfish life. Selflessness rather than selfishness, a life in pursuit of service rather than a life in pursuit of comfort, not guessing correctly, constitutes one’s vocation. Our Christian vocation is to make what we are in fact living – married, priest, religious, single in the world – a life of selflessness and service to others. Happiness and salvation are contingent upon that, not upon guessing correctly.
'Building a Bridge'
and
'Queer and Catholic'
and calling us to serve as your disciples.
as we use our gifts to serve you.
as we strive to bear witness
Amen.
Weekday Masses 22nd - 26th January 2018
Monday: No Mass
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe - Francis de Sales
Thursday: 12noon Devonport - Conversion of St Paul
Friday: 9:00am Ulverstone Australia
9:00am Devonport Day
9:00am Devonport Day
Next Weekend 27th - 28th January 2018
Saturday Vigil: 6:00pm Penguin
Devonport
Sunday Mass: 8:30am Port Sorell
9:00am Ulverstone
10:30am Devonport
11:00am Sheffield
5:00pm Latrobe
Your prayers
are asked for the sick: Vic Slavin, Rex Bates, David Welch, Phil Tuckett & …
Let us pray for those who have died recently: Graham Gregson, Josefina-Daguman Montiel, Janelle Payne, Paul Rush, Roger Foot, John Tooth, Tony McKenna, Joan Slater, Georgia Lewtas, Fr Tim O’Toole CP, Bob Wallace, Sr. Joy Hanrahan, Tony Marshall, Zoe Duncan, Margaret Devine, Ken Denison, Donald Cooper.
Let us pray
for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 17th – 23rd
January
Heather Hall, Kerry Berwick, Brian Matthews, Patricia
Lewis, Joan Summers, Jean Von Schill, Josephine Last, Bernard Mack, Barry Lyons, Dorothy Bell, Nicola Tenaglia, Margaret
Lockett, Nouhad Wenbe, Joan Garnsey, Len Gaffney.
May they Rest in Peace
Readings this week – 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B)
First Reading: Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Gospel: Mark 1:14-20
I read this text quietly from the heart.
I allow words or phrases to touch me.
I let myself be drawn by what moves me.
It is the living Word, the Good News that Christ himself gives.
As I read, I might be impressed by the response of the disciples to the call of Jesus from the shore.
It is whole-hearted.
Perhaps I am struck by the pace of the text.
Jesus says the time has come and calls on the people to repent and believe.
He calls the disciples and they follow immediately.
I ponder on the ready trust they show in Jesus and on the trust he shows in them.
I might like to reflect upon the same Christ calling my name from the shore of my own life.
How does his voice sound?
Does it ring clear or does it have to compete with other voices demanding my attention, investment, and commitment?
How does this voice console me?
I end my prayer by pondering this message of Good News.
I talk to Christ in my own words, asking that it sink down into the deepest part of my heart and soul; that I might really believe and trust.
Our Father ...
Readings next week – 4th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B)
First Reading: Deuteronomy 18:15-20
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 7:32-35
Gospel: Mark 1:21-28
Since
last week’s Ramblings we have had a conversation with Sharon Brewer, from the
National Centre for Evangelisation, the facilitator of our Reflection and
Hospitality Day, and the decision has been made to condense the process into
one day rather than two. The final outline is yet to be confirmed but we will
be making known all details next weekend.
The
PPT met on Wednesday evening and looked at some of the issues that need to be
addressed to ensure that we are able to form a new PPT. Key amongst the issues
is the question of communication – what are we looking for in members of the
PPT? How do we get representation from the whole of the Parish? How is this new
PPT different from the old PPC? Some of the information can be found at the Bus
Stop – why don’t you stop off and have a look! Or you can go to the online
version of the newsletter and find it there.
Next
Friday is Australia Day and Mass will be celebrated at 9:00am at both
Ulverstone & Devonport on that day – please note the earlier times to allow
parishioners to attend any civic celebrations during the morning.
We added a Financial Report for last year (or more
properly 16/17 financial year) to the Parish Notice Boards last weekend.
Apologies for the delay. In putting it forward we have to extend a great thank
you to the wonderful people who assist with Fundraising – especially Bingo,
Footy Margins, Piety Stall – your support is amazing.
Please
take care on the roads
Forming
a Parish Pastoral Team (PPT) for Mersey Leven
Mersey Leven Parish is a vibrant Catholic community,
unified in its commitment to making disciples for Christ.
The
Parish Pastoral Team (PPT) serves the parish and its people by exercising a
leadership role in the realisation of the parish vision.
The PPT is responsible for setting directions for
the parish, and then supporting, encouraging and enabling our parishioners in
making things happen.
Members of the PPT are people who want to be ‘on the
bus’. They are passionate about our vision, and are willing and able to be
active participants in a team which leads and supports others on the journey.
Composition of the Parish Pastoral Team (PPT). The team will
consist of - Parish priest and assistant Priest; 7 HOPs (Whole of Parish
members (see below for the process) and 6 SCs (Local Mass Centre Member).
Because some people might fit into both categories the max would be 15 with a
min of 9 members.
Process of selection of the PPT:
HOP members
discerned first from across the whole parish – non geographical. Interested
Parishioners will be invited to attend a discernment session with the Parish Leadership
Team. The PLT would then invite members as a result of this process.
Following the appointment of the HOP members, SC
members would then be chosen by each mass centre community. An SC could be, but not necessarily, someone
already on the PPT as a HOP member.
SACRAMENTAL PROGRAM
A reminder that the Sacramental Program for children in Gr
3 and above (in 2018) will commence with a meeting on Monday, 19th
Feb in Devonport and on Tuesday, 20th Feb in Ulverstone. Both
meetings will commence at 7pm.
The Preparation Day for the Sacrament of Reconciliation
will be held at OLOL Church and Hall on Saturday 3rd March from 10am
– 3pm.
The First Reconciliation celebrations will be on Tuesday,
20th March at OLOL Church and on Wednesday, 21st March at
Sacred Heart Church – both nights at 7pm
LENTEN PROGRAM
On the weekend of the 3rd/4th
February we will be inviting Parishioners to add their name to join a Lenten
Discussion group. There will be a number of options for times and places throughout
the Parish.
As Prayer is a major focus for our
Parish we would like to encourage as many people as possible to be part of a
group to enable you to grow in your relationship with Jesus.
There will be, unless we have too
many groups!!, some copies also available for individual reflection – a similar
program to the Advent series which we have just concluded.
Contemplation
This article has been collated from the daily email series from the Center for Action and Contemplation and Fr Richard Rohr OFM. You can subscribe and receive the emails by clicking here
This year as we explore the places in which God’s presence
has been ignored or forgotten, you may be challenged at times. I may say things
that you disagree with or that make you uncomfortable. And that’s okay! If
we’re not at least a bit uncomfortable, we’re probably not really thinking or
growing. Don’t rely on my authority. Let the wisdom of Scripture, your faith
tradition, and your own lived experience teach you.
Most importantly, I invite you to hold my many words in the
spaciousness of contemplative practice, letting the meditations work on you
more than you work on understanding them. The deepest truths can’t be grasped
at the level of intellect. Christianity can’t just be based on beliefs. It only
becomes authentic and transformative through experience and practice, when
head, heart, and body are all open and receptive.
As I said earlier this week, you can’t earn God’s image or
prove yourself worthy of God. Feeling God’s presence is simply a matter of
awareness. Of enjoying the now. Deepening one’s presence. There are moments
when it happens. Then life makes sense. Contemplative practice helps us become
habituated to this way of being, opening ourselves to presence in the ordinary
and humdrum.
Once I can see the Mystery here—and trust the Mystery even
in this piece of clay that I am, in this moment of time that I am—then I can
also see it in you. I am eventually able to see the divine image in all things.
Finally, the seeing is one. How you see anything is how you will see
everything.
This seeing happens in graced, momentary glimpses and
through intentional, lifelong practice. Each Saturday I’ll share an invitation
to a different form of contemplation or meditation in hopes that you’ll find
one or more that resonate. There are so many ways to open ourselves to
communion and presence, from sitting in silence to drumming, dancing, singing,
and being in nature. Sometimes it might sound silly, but don’t discount the
power and depth of a simple, even childlike experience. To begin, click here to
watch three short videos on the meaning and importance of practice-based
spirituality and explore several contemplative practices.
Adapted from Richard
Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (The Crossroad
Publishing Company: 2003), 57-58.
For Further Study:
Richard Rohr, The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your
Transformation (Whitaker House: 2016)
Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative
Prayer (The Crossroad Publishing Company: 2003)
Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self
(Jossey-Bass: 2013)
CAN YOU LOSE YOUR VOCATION?
The original of this article by Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI can found here
Recently I received a letter from a man who shared that he was still deeply haunted by a story he’d heard in grade school many years before. One of his religion teachers had read them a story about a priest who went to visit a childhood friend. While staying with his friend, the priest noticed that, while his friend was cheerful and affable enough, he seemed to be harboring some deep, residual sadness. When he asked his friend about it his friend confessed that he “had lost his salvation” because he had felt a call to priesthood when he was young but had chosen instead to marry. Now, he felt, there was no existential redemption from that. He had had a vocation and lost it and, with that, also lost for good his chance at happiness. Though happily enough married, he felt that he would bear forever the stigma of having been being unfaithful in not accepting his God-given vocation.
I was raised on stories like that. They were part of the Catholicism of my youth. We were taught to believe that God marked out a certain vocation for you, that is, to be a priest, a sister, a married person, or a single person in the world, and if you didn’t accept that, once you knew your calling, then you had “missed” or “lost” your vocation and the consequence would an abiding sadness and even the danger of missing heaven. Such were the vocation stories of my youth, and, truth be told, I went to the seminary to become a priest with that lingering as a shadow in my mind. But it was only a shadow. I didn’t enter religious life and priesthood out of fear, though some moral fears did play a part in it, as they should. Fear can also be a healthy thing.
But it can also be unhealthy. It’s not healthy to understand both God and your vocation in terms that can have you missing out on happiness and salvation on the basis on singular choice made while you are still young. God doesn’t work like that.
It’s true that we are called by God to a vocation which we are meant to discern through conscience, through community, through circumstance, and through the talents that we’ve been given. For a Christian, existence does not preceded essence. We’re born with a purpose, with a mission in life. There are many clear texts in scripture on this: Jesus, praying for entire nights to know his Father’s will; Peter conscripted on a rock to led by a belt that will take him where he would rather not go; Paul being led into Damascus and instructed by an elder as to his vocation; Moses being called to do a task because he saw the suffering of the people; and all of us being challenged to use our talents or be stripped of them. We’re all called to mission and so each of us has a vocation. We’re not morally free to live our lives simply for ourselves.
But God doesn’t give us just one chance which if we miss it or turn down will leave us sad forever. No. God opens a new door every time we close one. God gives us 77×7 chances, and more after that, if needed. The question of vocation is not so much a question of guessing right (What very specifically was I predestined for?) but rather a question of giving oneself over in faith and love to the situation that we’ve chosen (or which more often than not has by circumstance chosen us). We should not live in unhealthy fear about this. God continues to love us and desire our happiness, even when we don’t always follow to where we are ideally called.
Recently I heard a homily in a church in which the priest compared God to a GPS, a Global Positioning System, that is, that computerized instrument, complete with human voice, that countless people have today in their cars and which gives them ongoing instructions on how to get to their destination. One of its features is this: No matter how many times you disregard or disobey its command, the voice never expresses impatience, yells at you, or gives up on you. It simply says “Recalculating”. Sooner or later, no matter how many times you disregard it, it gets you home.
Delightful as is that image, it’s still but a very weak analogy in terms of understanding God’s patience and forgiveness. None of us should be haunted, long-term, by sadness and fear because we feel that we’ve missed our vocation, unless we are living a selfish life. Selflessness rather than selfishness, a life in pursuit of service rather than a life in pursuit of comfort, not guessing correctly, constitutes one’s vocation. Our Christian vocation is to make what we are in fact living – married, priest, religious, single in the world – a life of selflessness and service to others. Happiness and salvation are contingent upon that, not upon guessing correctly.
'Building a Bridge'
and
'Queer and Catholic'
'Building a Bridge' by James Martin SJ (Harper Collins, 2017; 160 pp; ISBN: 9780062694317) //
'Queer & Catholic: A life of contradiction' by Mark Dowd (Darton, Longman & Todd, 2017; 224 pp; ISBN: 9780232533095)
The reviewer, Brendan Callaghan SJ, is a chaplain to the Manchester Universities.
Holy Father
We need to talk
I have a secret
That I can’t keep
I’m not the boy that
You thought you wanted
Please don’t get angry
Have faith in me
(Sam Smith, ‘HIM’ from The Thrill of it All)
A key quality of Pope Francis’ papacy is his stress on discernment about our particular, concrete lives in the context of God’s abounding mercy: ‘Discernment must help to find possible ways of responding to God and growing in the midst of limits.’[i] He contrasts this to, ‘an attitude that would solve everything by applying general rules or deriving undue conclusions from particular theological considerations.’[ii] Francis’ pastoral approach is not his own off-the-cuff invention, but is rooted equally in the documents and whole process of the Second Vatican Council, on the one hand, and the insights and experience of the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius Loyola, on the other. And, as we have been reminded in recent weeks, it reaches back faithfully to St Thomas Aquinas and the Summa Theologica, for so long held up as the definitive and authoritative formulation of Catholic theology.
You can read the complete article on the ThinkingFaith.org website by clicking here
'Building a Bridge' by James Martin SJ (Harper Collins, 2017; 160 pp; ISBN: 9780062694317) //
'Queer & Catholic: A life of contradiction' by Mark Dowd (Darton, Longman & Todd, 2017; 224 pp; ISBN: 9780232533095)
The reviewer, Brendan Callaghan SJ, is a chaplain to the Manchester Universities.
'Queer & Catholic: A life of contradiction' by Mark Dowd (Darton, Longman & Todd, 2017; 224 pp; ISBN: 9780232533095)
The reviewer, Brendan Callaghan SJ, is a chaplain to the Manchester Universities.
Holy Father
We need to talk
I have a secret
That I can’t keep
I’m not the boy that
You thought you wanted
Please don’t get angry
Have faith in me
(Sam Smith, ‘HIM’ from The Thrill of it All)
A key quality of Pope Francis’ papacy is his stress on discernment about our particular, concrete lives in the context of God’s abounding mercy: ‘Discernment must help to find possible ways of responding to God and growing in the midst of limits.’[i] He contrasts this to, ‘an attitude that would solve everything by applying general rules or deriving undue conclusions from particular theological considerations.’[ii] Francis’ pastoral approach is not his own off-the-cuff invention, but is rooted equally in the documents and whole process of the Second Vatican Council, on the one hand, and the insights and experience of the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius Loyola, on the other. And, as we have been reminded in recent weeks, it reaches back faithfully to St Thomas Aquinas and the Summa Theologica, for so long held up as the definitive and authoritative formulation of Catholic theology.
You can read the complete article on the ThinkingFaith.org website by clicking here
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