Friday 9 October 2020

28th Sunday In Ordinary Time (Year A)

 Mersey Leven Catholic Parish

OUR VISION
To be a vibrant Catholic Community 
unified in its commitment 
to growing disciples for Christ
 

Parish Priest: Fr Mike Delaney 
Mob: 0417 279 437
Assistant Priest: Fr Steven Smith
Mob: 0411 522 630 
Priest in Residence:  Fr Phil McCormack  
Mob: 0437 521 257 
Seminarian in Residence: Kanishka Perera
Mob: 0499 035 199 
Postal Address: PO Box 362, Devonport 7310
Parish Office: 90 Stewart Street, Devonport 7310 
(Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 10am - 3pm)
Office Phone: 6424 2783  Email: merseyleven@aohtas.org.au 
Secretary: Annie Davies Finance Officer: Anne Fisher


Mersey Leven Catholic Parish Weekly Newsletter: mlcathparish.blogspot.com.au
Parish Mass times for the Month: mlcpmasstimes.blogspot.com.au
Weekly Homily Podcast: mikedelaney.podomatic.com 

Archdiocesan Website: www.hobart.catholic.org.au for news, information and details of other Parishes.

         

PLENARY COUNCIL PRAYER
Come, Holy Spirit of Pentecost.
Come, Holy Spirit of the great South Land.
O God, bless and unite all your people in Australia 
and guide us on the pilgrim way of the Plenary Council.
Give us the grace to see your face in one another 
and to recognise Jesus, our companion on the road.
Give us the courage to tell our stories and to speak boldly of your truth.
Give us ears to listen humbly to each other 
and a discerning heart to hear what you are saying.
Lead your Church into a hope-filled future, 
that we may live the joy of the Gospel.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord, bread for the journey from age to age.   
Amen.
Our Lady Help of Christians, pray for us.
St Mary MacKillop, pray for us.


Parish Prayer


Heavenly Father,
We thank you for gathering us together 
and calling us to serve as your disciples.
You have charged us through Your Son, Jesus, with the great mission
  of evangelising and witnessing your love to the world.
Send your Holy Spirit to guide us as we discern your will
 for the spiritual renewal of our parish.
Give us strength, courage, and clear vision 
as we use our gifts to serve you.
We entrust our parish family to the care of Mary, our mother,
and ask for her intercession and guidance 
as we strive to bear witness
 to the Gospel and build an amazing parish.
Amen.
Our Parish Sacramental Life
Baptism: Arrangements are made by contacting Parish Office. Parents attend a Baptismal Preparation Session organised with a Priest.
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) 
Eucharistic Adoration - Devonport: Every Friday 10am - 12noon, concluding with Stations of the Cross and Angelus 
Benediction with Adoration Devonport:  First Friday each month 
Legion of Mary: Wednesdays 11am Sacred Heart Church Community Room, Ulverstone
Prayer Group: Charismatic Renewal – Mondays 6pm Community Room Ulverstone 

SUNDAY MASS ONLINE: 
Please go to the following link on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MLCP1
Mon 12th Oct        NO MASS
Tues 13th Oct        9:30am Devonport  
Wed 14th Oct        9:30am Ulverstone  ... Callistus 1
Thurs 15th Oct      12 noon Devonport  ... Teresa of Jesus 
Fri 16th Oct           9:30am Ulverstone   ... Hedwig
Sat 17th Oct         8.30am Devonport ... Ignatius of Antioch, also recording Sunday Mass
                              6:00pm Devonport  
      6:00pm Ulverstone
Sun 18th Oct       10:00am Devonport ... ALSO LIVESTREAM
     10:00am Ulverstone 
 If you are looking for Sunday Mass readings or Daily Mass readings, Universalis has the readings as well as the various Hours of the Divine Office
                            

Your prayers are asked for the sick: Jill Cotterill, Brian Robertson, Deb Edwards, Sydney Corbett, Merv Jaffray, Delma Pieri, & …

Let us pray for those who have died recently:
Fr. Frank Gibson, Graham McKenna, Joyce Maxwell, Warren Carpenter, Uleen Castles, Helmut Berger, Warren Carpenter, Judy Freeman, Fr Neville Dunne MSC, Shane Kirkpatrick, Graeme Wilson
                       
Let us pray for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 7th – 13th October, 2020
Natarsha Charlesworth, Sr Barbara Hateley MSS, Jock Donachie, Ashley Dyer, James Ryan, Helena Wyllie, Elaine Sheedy, Paul Blake, John Novaski, Fr Bart San, Bridie Murray, Ronald Arrowsmith, Peter Hays, Stella Smith, Josefina Turnbull, Peter Beard, Mary Lube, Mary Guthrie.
May the souls of the faithful departed, 
through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen
                                

PREGO REFLECTION ON TODAY’S GOSPEL:
As I settle to prayer, I take the time to relax my body and gently breathe in the goodness and love of God. 
When I am ready, I ask the Lord to reveal his word for me in this parable. 
I read it slowly a couple of times. 
Jesus is in Jerusalem, frustrated by the attitude of the leaders of the people. 
But he is still calling them into relationship with him, to a joyful feast united with so many others. 
How does this speak to me in my life? 
I pause so that I can hear Jesus speaking to me. 
If I feel challenged and hesitate to respond, what reasons do I give myself? 
Perhaps resenting the messenger ... or not wanting to be involved with others...? 
I give thanks to the Lord for calling me continuously, for the grace of belonging to a community, for the gift of the Eucharist ... I may pray for greater acceptance, unity and harmony in various parts of the world. 
I end my prayer in gratitude with a ‘Glory be...’
                                

Weekly Ramblings

Whilst our focus during the month of October is on the Month of Prayer this month is also Mission Month and this weekend is Mission Sunday. Whilst there is some information in our newsletter today you can find the 2020 information by going to https://catholicmission.org.au and click the Our Work Button, then World Mission Appeal – Cambodia. There are all kinds of resources available there including the story of Dara and Chen and more about the Arrupe Centre which supports these children and their families.

Next weekend is another big weekend in our Prayer Journey – again, there is more information in our newsletter today. Again, the opportunities we are extending are simply invitations to try a, perhaps, new way of coming to God in prayer – not asking you to turn away from other forms of prayer you currently use.

Apologies to those who were not able to connect to our Livestream Mass last Sunday at the right time. We recorded the Mass earlier so that we could add the Parts of the Mass into the feed but when we tried to adjust the publication time to Daylight Savings for some reason the times kept changing as Facebook and YouTube adjusted to what they believed was the time we wanted. Hopefully, we will be right this weekend.

I will be arranging some meetings in the next week or so to provide an opportunity for people to share some thoughts on the past few months and present some ideas as we look to the future. More information next week.

Stay safe, stay sane and take care, 
                                

CREATION WALK
When - Saturday 17th October at 1.00pm.  
Where: Mt Gnomon car park for a 1 hour walk to the Mt Gnomon Summit.
As the name suggests it does go up hill.  It also has good ocean views (on a good day) as a reward for effort. 
Mt Gnomon farm may be an option for coffee before or after but that would be a personal choice.
The intention of the walk is to experience and acknowledge the beauty of creation and to walk with a sense of gratitude, which is itself a prayer.
If you are interested please contact Michael Hendrey - michael.hendrey8@bigpond.com

CENTERING PRAYER 
Sunday 18th, there will an introductory session, following the 10am Mass at Sacred Heart, on the practice of Centering Prayer. Many of us are familiar with the term Contemplative Prayer, some of us use this form of prayer regularly. Centering Prayer is a method that helps a person better prepare to enter into Contemplative Prayer. 

Other Prayer forms that will be explored during the Month of October The Divine Office – 11am on 25th October at Devonport; and Ignatian Imagining – 11am on 1st November at Ulverstone.

MORNING PRAYER 
As part of our Month of Prayer, Morning Prayer (Lauds), will be recited each Monday in October from 9.30am to 10.00am at St Joseph’s Mass Centre Port Sorell. Dates are Monday 12, 19 & 26 October. We will use the Prayer of the Church (Divine Office) for the day. Participants will be introduced to the ‘Prayer of the Church’ and provided with the prayers for communal recitation.
If you have questions, require further information or hope to attend contact Giuseppe Gigliotti on 0419 684 134 or gigli@comcen.com.au Covid protocols will be observed.
                                

                                

SOLEMNITY OF ST TERESA OF AVILA 15th OCTOBER
A Novena of Masses and Prayers will be offered at the Carmelite Monastery, Launceston, in preparation for this feast from 6th – 14th October. Intentions may be sent to Mother Teresa Benedicta at the Monastery by post 7 Cambridge St., Launceston, phone 6331 3585 or tascarmelvoc@gmail.com
                                

NOVEMBER REMEMBRANCE BOOKS
November is the month we remember in a special way all those who have died. Should you wish anyone to be remembered, write the names of those to be prayed for on the outside of an envelope and place the clearly marked envelope in the collection basket at Mass or deliver to the Parish Office by Thursday 22nd October.
                                

VOCATION REFLECTION DAY
A Vocations Reflection day is to be held at St Michael’s, Campbell Town on Saturday 24 October 2020 from 10:00am - 3:00pm. The program will include prayer and reflection, discussion and several
talks including a testimony and a video on seminary life.
Any young man who is interested in attending is invited to contact Fr Brian Nichols: briannichols@bigpond.com
                                

PARISH MOVIE NIGHT
On Behalf of the Mersey Leven Catholic Parish, we would like to invite you to attend the inaugural Parish Movie night.
What: Paul, Apostle of Christ
When: 7pm - Friday 23rd October
Where: Sacred Heart Ulverstone Community Room
Tea and Coffee Provided, A plate of food to share is encouraged.  
If you would like to see the trailer first, it can be found at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyOqQZUDdO4
                                

Aid to the Church in Need is organizing the prayer campaign One Million Children Praying the Rosary. We know how powerful the prayers of children are, they fly like an arrow into the heart of God. How powerful then is the prayer of the Rosary prayed by millions of children, and adults, all around the world! Join this prayer campaign on the 18th of October. Go to www.aidtochurch.org/one-million-children to learn more.
                                


Letter From Rome 

The Pope's Irresponsible Behaviour And Those Who Defend It


Pope Francis has ignored a new Vatican decree on the mandatory use of facemasks

-  Robert Mickens, Rome, October 9, 2020. 

This article is from the La-Croix International website - you can access the site here but complete full access is via paid subscription


The Governorate of Vatican City this week made it "obligatory" for "every individual" to wear a facemask inside the offices and buildings of the tiny city-state and its extraterritorial areas, including when outdoors.

But the very next day Pope Francis held his Wednesday general audience inside the Paul VI Hall and he was not wearing a mask.

And neither were most of his aides or secretaries, despite the fact that the Governorate stated clearly that the new "norm must be constantly respected".

It further said that the Vatican health services, "even through the help of the gendarmerie", would enforce compliance. Representatives of the health and security departments were in the hall for the Oct. 7th general audience.

But since the pope was one of the "individuals" flouting the norm, there was precious little they could do – except react with the same disbelief and deep concern that many other people did who witnessed this irresponsible behavior.

Even people in the Vatican are shocked
"I don't get it," said a senior Vatican official, expressing complete bewilderment as to why Francis was engaging in risky behavior.

The 83-year pope, who is visibly overweight and is missing a part of a lung, was not just without a mask at the indoor event. On more than just a few instances during his lingering entrance from the back of the hall he was clearly not respecting proper distancing from people in the crowd.

"It's interesting that in a time of social distancing, #PopeFrancis draws as close as safely possible," a veteran Vatican-based journalist noted on Twitter.

But he was not doing it as safely as possible. He was touching objects people gave him and, once again, kissed the hands of recently ordained priests – three of them this time.

And a number of people who were on the front lines of the corridor that the pope was strolling down were not wearing their masks properly. Many of them did not have their noses covered, including the new priests who huddled around Francis and prayed over him.

Up close and face-to-face
There were two other priests, one who looked to be in his mid-70s and the other a bit older, who had their masks pulled down below their mouths. They actually engaged the pope in conversations, each of which lasted for what seemed to be a couple of minutes.

You could see for yourselves on the Vatican's video channel on YouTube, except that – different from the videos of previous audiences – this one doesn't show the pope greeting people in attendance in the 15 to 20 minutes leading to the actual catechesis.

But there's another problem (and this you can see in the previous videos). It is the behavior of the crowd. Those earlier events were all outside. This one was moved indoors because of heavy rains.

Whether inside or not, the seating plan is designed to ensure proper distance between individuals. But that means nothing when they all leave their places and rush to the barrier, pressing up against one another to get a close-up look at the pope.

It's understandable that Francis wants to have contact with the "pilgrims" that come to see him, but this borders on recklessness.

Francis becomes another mask-less face for Covid-skeptics
Interestingly, most journalists who cover the Vatican have remained mum about the pope's behavior, even those who mercilessly deride Donald Trump – and rightly so – for not wearing a mask and putting himself and others at risk of infection.

A colleague explained why in a Tweet.

"This sort of criticism has been rare so far, maybe because many of the people most inclined to criticize the pope (at least in the U.S.) are also skeptical about masks," he said.

Irony of ironies.

The Covid-skeptics are secretly delighting in the fact that the very pope who has warned Catholics throughout the pandemic to follow the health precautions decreed by their local and national governments has now become another high-profile, unmasked face of their conspiracy theory-driven assault on common sense.

Many Vatican employees are horrified by the pope's behavior. And so should anyone else who actually cares for this man – and the people with whom he comes in contact each day.

Fratelli tutti, indeed.

The pope's false friends: defending the indefensible
But should one criticize the pope – for any reason whatever – the Francis groupies and self-appointed interpreters of his every thought and action will brand that fratello (or sorella) as an ideologue.

"My pope, right or wrong." That is understandable.

But if you look at the pope's fiercest defenders, at least those who seem to spend inordinate amounts of time on social media, the motto has turned into, "My pope is never wrong.

"Pope Francis has been a great gift to the Church and to the world. But he is only a human being. And like all human beings, he can be wrong. In fact, he has shown in the past – as in the case of sex abuse in Chile, as just one example – that he can be spectacularly and devastatingly wrong.

His aides and so-called friends and fans do him no favors by jumping through hoops to defend him when his words or actions are indefensible.

There has been a spike in coronavirus infections over the past few weeks in Italy. In the last three days alone they have risen by 1,000 cases every 24 hours.

Francis' refusal to wear a facemask and keep proper distance from people at this time of pandemic is extremely troubling. Not only is he setting a very bad example for all those who look to him for guidance, but he is also putting his health and that of others in danger.

Those who truly care for him should at least be able to agree on one thing: now is not the time for another conclave.


                                

A Fascinating Discovery

This article is taken from the Daily Email sent by Fr Richard Rohr OFM from the Center for Action and Contemplation. You can subscribe to receive the email by clicking here 

Those of us who live in the West and experience the privilege of being white tend to gloss over the important fact that Jesus lived in an occupied territory. He was not part of the dominant culture. Rather, his familial and cultural land was occupied by a powerful adversary. This is essential to understanding his teachings and the Gospel. Text without context is dangerous! Imagine how different Christianity would look today if we had acknowledged this truth. Mitri Raheb is a Palestinian Christian, author, and Lutheran pastor who lives and works in Bethlehem. This context offers him a unique way of knowing and interpreting the Gospel, one that we in the West can certainly learn from. 

As a Palestinian Christian, Palestine is the land of both my physical and my spiritual forefathers and foremothers. The biblical story is thus part and parcel of my nation’s history, a history of continuous occupation by succeeding empires. In fact, the biblical story can best be understood as a response to the geo-political history of the region. . . .  

Jesus was a Middle Eastern Palestinian Jew. If he were to travel through Western countries today, he would be “randomly” pulled aside and his person and papers would be checked. The Bible is a Middle Eastern book. It is a product of that region with all of its complexities. While it might seem that I am stating the obvious, I firmly believe that this notion has not been given enough attention. In fact and in spite of being a Middle Easterner, I have come to discover the importance of the geo-politics of the region only in the last ten years. I began to sense that it was not merely by chance that the three monotheistic religions and their sacred scriptures, for good or for bad, hailed from the same region. . . . For me, as a Palestinian Christian, the realization of this fact made for a fascinating discovery. 

This discovery did not come to light in an academic setting somewhere in the West, and it was not the outcome of a study I undertook in a research center. It was, instead, the gradual accumulation of knowledge I gained “in the field” by observing the movements and processes occurring in Palestine over a prolonged period. In short, I was observing, analyzing, and trying to understand what was happening around me. . . .
   
Empires create their own theologies to justify their occupation. [Just as the early American empires chose to overlook its mistreatment of the Native tribes who already lived here and then justified a slave holder form of Christianity in much of the Americas. —RR] Such oppression generates a number of important questions among the occupied: “Where are you, God?” and “Why doesn’t God interfere to rescue [God’s] people?” When, under various regimes, diverse identities emerge in different parts of Palestine, the question arises, “Who is my neighbor?” And finally, “How can liberation be achieved?” is a constant question. . . . These questions and the differing responses can be found in the Bible, just as they are found in Palestine today. . . . 

As a pastor I refuse to separate the reality of this world from the reality of the Bible by preaching a “cheap gospel” that neither challenges reality nor is challenged by it.  
                                

Spirituality And The Second Half Of Life

This article is taken from the archive of Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. You can find this article and many others by clicking here 

One size doesn’t fit everyone. This isn’t just true for clothing, it’s also true for spirituality. Our challenges in life change as we age.  Spirituality hasn’t always been fully sensitive to this. True, we’ve always had tailored instruction and activities for children, young people, and for people who are raising children, carrying a job, and paying a mortgage, but we’ve never developed a spirituality for what happens when those years are over.

Why is one needed? Jesus seemingly didn’t have one. He didn’t have one set of teachings for the young, another for those in mid-life, and still another for the elderly. He just taught. The Sermon on the Mount, the parables, and his invitation to take up his cross are intended in the same way for everyone, irrespective of age. But we hear those teaching at very different times in our lives; and it’s one thing to hear the Sermon the Mount when you’re seven years old, another when you’re twenty-seven, and quite another when you’re eighty-seven. Jesus’ teachings don’t change, but we do, and they offer very specific challenges at different times of our lives.

Christian spirituality has generally kept this in mind, with one exception. Except for Jesus and an occasional mystic, it has failed to develop an explicit spirituality for our later years, for how we are meant to be generative in our senior years and how we are to die in a life-giving way. But there’s a good reason for this lacuna. Simply put, it wasn’t needed because up until this last century most people never lived into old age. For example, in Palestine, in Jesus’ time, the average life expectancy was thirty to thirty-five years.  A century ago in the United States, it was still less than fifty years.  When most people in the world died before they reached the age of fifty, there was no real need for a spirituality of aging.

There is such a spirituality inside the Gospels. Even though he died at thirty-three, Jesus left us a paradigm of how to age and die. But that paradigm, while healthily infusing and undergirding Christian spirituality in general, was never developed more specifically into a spirituality of aging (with the exception of some of the great Christian mystics).

After Jesus, the Desert fathers and mothers folded the question of how to age and die into the overall framework of their spirituality. For them, spirituality was a quest to “see the face of God” and that, as Jesus makes clear, requires one thing, purity of heart. So for them, no matter your age, the challenge was the same, trying to achieve purity of heart. Then in the age of the persecutions and the early Christian martyrs, the idea developed that the ideal way to age and die was through martyrdom. Later, when Christians were no longer physically martyred, the idea took hold that you could take on a voluntary type of martyrdom by living the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience. They believed that living these, like the quest for purity of heart, taught you all you needed to know, no matter your age. Eventually this was expanded to mean that anyone who faithfully responded to the duties in his or her life, irrespective of age, would learn everything necessary to come to sanctity through that fidelity. As a famous aphorism put it: Stay inside your cell and it will teach you all you need to know. Understood properly, there’s a spirituality of aging and dying inside these notions, but until recently there was little need to draw that out more explicitly.

Happily, today the situation is changing and we’re developing, more and more, some explicit spiritualities of aging and dying. Perhaps this reflects an aging population, but there’s now a burgeoning body of literature, both religious and secular, that’s taking up the question of aging and dying. These authors, too numerous to mention, include many names already familiar to us: Henri Nouwen, Richard Rohr, Kathleen Dowling Singh, David Brooks, Cardinal Bernardin, Michael Paul Gallagher, Joan Chittister, Parker Palmer, Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, Paul Kalanithi, Erica Jong, Kathie Roiphe, and Wilkie and Noreeen Au, among others. Coming from a variety of perspectives, each of these offer insights into what God and nature intend for us in our later years.

In essence, here’s the issue: today, we’re living longer and healthier late into life. It’s common today to retire sometime in our early sixties after having raised our children, superannuated from our jobs, and paid our mortgages. So what’s next, given that we probably have twenty or thirty more years of health and energy left? What are these years for? What are we called to now, beyond loving our grandkids? Abraham and Sarah, in their old age, were invited to set out for a new land and conceive a child long after this was biologically impossible for them. That’s our call too. What “Isaac” are we called to give birth to in our later years? We need guidance.
                                

Saving Liberalism From Itself


Pope Francis’ third encyclical ‘poses an incremental expansion of the tradition of Catholic Social Teaching which carefully lays bare its logic and gently radicalises some of its implications’, writes Damian Howard SJ. In Fratelli tutti, how does the pope respond to a confused and troubled world which is struggling to articulate a vision for its future, with a gospel-centred narrative which is both practical and ambitious? Damian Howard SJ is the Provincial of the Jesuits in Britain.
This article is taken from the ThinkingFaith.org website where you can find a wide range of articles by clicking here 

Catholic Social Teaching just keeps coming these days. That should be no surprise at a time of such upheaval. Only five years ago, in what seems like a different world, Laudato si’ prophetically placed the ecological crisis centre stage for the Church and the world. The enormous agenda that teaching document mapped out seemed at the time more than enough to be getting on with. Since then a whole new vocabulary has come into being, expressive of a set of new social and political challenges: Brexit, MAGA, Covid-19, BLM, fake news, lockdown, cancel culture, QAnon … Pope Francis is surely right to think that a confused world urgently needs some Catholic common sense, and that is precisely what Fratelli tutti provides.

Politics today functions across the globe as if there were only two visions for the future of humankind: to persevere with the four decades-long project of neo-liberal economics, with its succession of ever-deeper economic and debt crises, its austerity regimes and the cold, technocratic globalisation that is so rapidly erasing cultural differences and empowering a new class of the super-rich; or to resist all that by promoting national populisms of various sorts which foment propaganda, talk of empowering ordinary people against the social, financial and educational elites and their ridiculous ‘woke’ concerns, but all the while colluding with corrupt financial interests. We are told it’s a choice between Fox News and a hundred new gender pronouns.

It doesn’t take too much effort to realise that this dichotomy is a mirage. These are only the noisiest and laziest options on offer, the easiest to caricature – and to communicate in a tweet. In many ways, they are two sides of the same coin. But they pose a problem. As the recent US presidential debate (which was neither presidential nor a debate) showed, politics in some parts of the world are getting very close now to mutually assured destruction, so powerful is the toxic effect of this incessant antiphony.

A not-unusual Catholic move to make in such a situation is to try to locate on each side some reflection of a resplendent truth and then to see if, instead of insisting on the ‘either-or’ of binary opposition, there might in fact be greater wisdom in a ‘both-and’ approach. And this is precisely what this long encyclical, the third of Pope Francis’ pontificate, sets out to do, sketching out in the process a vision that is conscious of its own ambition and yet intensely practical.

‘Liberal’ has become a dirty word for millions of people the world over whose every instinct is in fact liberal. The Enlightenment vision of a society founded on the principle of the freedom of individuals has combined with an economic orthodoxy committed to the ideal of the universal operation of free markets as the most effective way of distributing goods, to create a powerfully attractive model for the organisation of human relations.  Most of us who inhabit the rich countries of the world would find any other way of being quite intolerable, even though its shortcomings are so tangible: painful inequality, banal materialism, the lack of any shared vision of the good life to unite us...  

Yet the value of liberal culture does not simply boil down to a taste for creature comforts and a life of do-as-you-please. There is a nobility to the story of the post-war efflorescence of human rights, to the spread of the rule of law across the globe, to the many international institutions which have been put in place to safeguard the common good, and to the shared disgust aroused by the Shoah and the war-time use of thermonuclear weapons which crystallised an appetite for racial equality and peace. And the Church has always seen these things and valued them, even if she has also been only too aware of the flaky underpinnings of liberal theory.

In Fratelli tutti, the very liberal-sounding idea of universal fraternity is put into dialogue with the gospel message which points so strikingly in the direction of the brother- and sisterhood of every human being. A more triumphalistic pontiff would have insisted that the gospel was the ultimate source of all that is good in the Enlightenment, including its vision of human equality. But Francis does not play those sorts of games, preferring instead to scratch his head in disbelief at how long it took the Church to realise that slavery and Christianity were incompatible (§86).

Essentially, Francis believes that the gospel can give a soul to the idea that we are bound to respect one another’s inherent dignity, to work for a society in which everyone is included and for an international order in which cultural and other differences are sources of enrichment rather than resentment. The liberal vision on its own is dry, formal and abstract. It over-reaches itself when it envisages a universal civilisation of peace because it leaves love out of the picture, and love is the only thing that can bring the liberal virtues to life. The love of humanity in general, as Dostoyevsky pointed out, all too readily cohabits with a scorn for the real, flesh-and-bone human beings who surround me.

The fact that so many who would gleefully class themselves as ‘global citizens’ do not get beyond merely proclaiming universal human dignity is what makes them sitting ducks for ridicule as bourgeois virtue-signallers, woke adolescents, self-serving hypocrites whose progressive opinions serve little function other than to make their hearts feel warmer than they are. And it’s that jeering critique of a ‘globalisation’ at the beck and call of a disingenuous elite which today sustains a whole series of movements, more or less inchoate, which seek to bring an end to the liberal project and to put something more sinister in its place. Francis is keenly aware of the dynamics at play here and the complex way in which righteous indignation fuses with malign opportunism to create modern day populism, a phenomenon he finds as distasteful as soulless, technocratic liberalism.

But if universal love is to be more than a pious soundbite, one is entitled to ask what it looks like in practice and how one learns to act on it. In answer to the first question, Pope Francis offers one parable and two Christian lives. The parable, of course, is that of the so-called Good Samaritan, which is the scriptural heart of the encyclical, carefully read in chapter two, ‘A Stranger on the Road’. The two lives are those of Francis of Assisi and Charles de Foucauld, the nineteenth century founder of the Little Brothers of Jesus, both radical men of God whose missionary activity notably included outreach to the Muslim world.

Most of the encyclical is an answer to the second question: how do we become practitioners of a universal love? It is not a question our civilisation often asks. Francis thinks that it has to be worked at, it doesn’t just happen of itself. It is definitely not just a matter of being nice. We have to be formed by our family and educated into the practices and virtues of universal love. But where to begin? Francis’ Catholic ‘both-and’ strategy enables us to see that the actual starting point for the journey into universal love is our learning first to love our own roots, our own culture, our own homeland, in short to become a happy member of a people.

But isn’t this precisely the trap of populism and nationalism? Not at all. A true love of such things does not close us off from the universal horizon but actually blossoms into a concrete universal love appreciative of other ways of being human. It’s a corruption of my sense of being part of a people that turns it into an exclusive identity. Taking a swipe at the modern Catholic followers of Carl Schmitt, Francis says that other cultures ‘are not “enemies” from which we need to protect ourselves, but differing reflections of the inexhaustible richness of human life.’ (§147)

The rest of the encyclical could be said to flow from that insight which gives not so much radical novelty but a new edge to aspects of Catholic teaching. Social teaching, for example, has previously affirmed both the so-called universal destination of goods and the right to private property. But this passage is stark enough to ensure that it will not go down well in some parts of the Church:

The right to private property can only be considered a secondary natural right, derived from the principle of the universal destination of created goods. This has concrete consequences that ought to be reflected in the workings of society. Yet it often happens that secondary rights displace primary and overriding rights, in practice making them irrelevant. (§120)
A large section of the encyclical is devoted to the plight of refugees, and ‘the right of all individuals to find a place that meets their basic needs and those of their families, and where they can find personal fulfilment’ (§129). There is also a powerful treatment of the duty to remember the horrors of human history: notably the Shoah, Hiroshima and slavery (§247f). Memory of such things, Francis points out, is an essential component of social and political love.

Those who truly forgive do not forget. Instead, they choose not to yield to the same destructive force that caused them so much suffering. They break the vicious circle; they halt the advance of the forces of destruction. They choose not to spread in society the spirit of revenge that will sooner or later return to take its toll. Revenge never truly satisfies victims. Some crimes are so horrendous and cruel that the punishment of those who perpetrated them does not serve to repair the harm done. Even killing the criminal would not be enough, nor could any form of torture prove commensurate with the sufferings inflicted on the victim. Revenge resolves nothing. (§251)
From there, the pope segues to his recent modification of the Church’s official teaching on the death penalty so that the Catholic position now is to rule it out entirely. The logic for this – the inalienable human dignity even of murderers – is carefully articulated towards the end of Fratelli tutti, in tandem with an ominous condemnation of war. These will be controversial passages for some. Anyone who thinks such positions platitudinous has not been paying attention to the increasingly startling views of those Catholic pundits who view neo-liberal economics – and US foreign policy – as the optimal implementation of Catholic Social Teaching.

Many of Pope Benedict XVI’s concerns are echoed in clear continuity with his social encyclical, Caritas in veritate (2009), after Laudato si’ the second most cited document in the whole letter: the importance of attending to a new global political order (§138), of social action governed by the logic of gift (§139), and of combining private charitable action with political effort to change social structures (§187). But Francis has his own personal touches to bring to the tradition. He stresses the importance of meeting others, of creating a culture of encounter in which we really get to know each other in all our complexity. In the era of Covid that sounds as desirable as it is – temporarily, we hope – impossible to realise. He is committed to the notion that being human means being part of a people, an altered populism, if you like, with its own ‘mythic’ character (§158). He envisages the inclusive society as ‘polyhedral’, respectful, in other words, of categorical difference and abstaining from the imposition of homogenising frameworks (§215). And his desire for understanding between Christians, Jews and Muslims frames the whole document, peppered as it is with references to the Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together which he and Ahmed el-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, signed in Abu Dhabi last year.

With much else worthy of exploration and meditation, from kindness to concupiscence, from religious freedom to forgiveness, this letter poses an incremental expansion of the tradition of Catholic Social Teaching which carefully lays bare its logic and gently radicalises some of its implications. But its real value is its coherent reiteration of the essentials of the gospel message at a time when so many of us, for good reasons and bad, risk becoming fatally distracted by non-essentials. When Pope Benedict wrote his first encyclical, Deus caritas est, in 2005, he wanted to focus on the central tenet of the faith, to give the People of God that ‘back to basics’ summons which we, the Church’s daughters and sons, need every now and again. The proof of the need for such a call will be the plentiful online venting of spleens which Fratelli tutti is almost certain to provoke, either by virtue of its title or its trenchantly ‘left-wing’ positions. Let’s hope that once the storm has subsided it will help some of the Church’s vitriolic commentators to stand back for a moment from their vicious name-calling, in most cases a habit only recently acquired, and to ask themselves how a life ostensibly devoted to universal love and reconciliation could ever have come to such a pass.

One of the complaints sometimes levelled at the teaching of the Second Vatican Council is that it is redolent of the hippy-dippy optimism of the 1960s. The author of Fratelli tutti is well aware that his idealism, his dream of a new culture of universal love, his confidence that the obstacles to world peace can be faced down, all guarantee that he will be charged with an unseemly naivete. Yet no-one, not even his fiercest detractors, can accuse him of hitching himself to the optimism of the age. This is an encyclical for tumultuous times, for a pandemic wrapped inside a financial crisis encased in impending ecological catastrophe. But the roadmap is sober and practical, if seriously challenging:

We can start from below and, case by case, act at the most concrete and local levels, and then expand to the farthest reaches of our countries and our world, with the same care and concern that the Samaritan showed for each of the wounded man’s injuries. Let us seek out others and embrace the world as it is, without fear of pain or a sense of inadequacy, because there we will discover all the goodness that God has planted in human hearts. Difficulties that seem overwhelming are opportunities for growth, not excuses for a glum resignation that can lead only to acquiescence. Yet let us not do this alone, as individuals. The Samaritan discovered an innkeeper who would care for the man; we too are called to unite as a family that is stronger than the sum of small individual members. […] Let us renounce the pettiness and resentment of useless in-fighting and constant confrontation.  Let us stop feeling sorry for ourselves and acknowledge our crimes, our apathy, our lies. Reparation and reconciliation will give us new life and set us all free from fear. (§78)
What is the source of such vision and encouragement at a time when hope seems impossible to come by? Whence the confidence in ordinary human goodness to send us all back to our families, to our neighbourhood and towns to work humbly wherever we are for the global common good? The answer is, of course, Francis of Assisi:

In the world of that time, bristling with watchtowers and defensive walls, cities were a theatre of brutal wars between powerful families, even as poverty was spreading through the countryside. Yet there Francis was able to welcome true peace into his heart and free himself of the desire to wield power over others. He became one of the poor and sought to live in harmony with all. (§4)

The profound spirituality of il poverello is palpable throughout Fratelli tutti. That, I imagine, is why the title, a quotation of the saint, has endured in spite of valid objections to sexist language in ecclesial texts. It’s the key that holds together the lure of a simple life, universal love and openness to Muslims. The multi-faceted revolution which Francis and his new order brought to the Church of his age was so steeped in the spirit of the poor Christ that it sparked off expectations that a new age of history was at hand. The name ‘Francis’ which the then Cardinal Bergoglio chose on accession to the See of Peter may not, it turns out, stand for a mere programme of ecclesial reform so much as offer a window onto a mystery of providence. Perhaps the Jesuit pope is refining the famous final paragraph of Alasdair McIntyre’s After Virtue (1981). What we have been waiting for is not a Godot but another – doubtless very different – St Francis.
                                

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