Mersey Leven Catholic Parish
OUR VISION
Parish Priest: Fr Mike Delaney
Mob: 0417 279 437
Email: mike.delaney@aohtas.org.au
Priest in Residence: Fr Phil McCormack
Mob: 0437 521 257
Email: pmccormack43@bigpond.com
Seminarian in Residence: Kanishka Perera
Mob: 0499 035 199
Email: kanish_biyanwila@yahoo.com
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
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.
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,
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.Our Parish Sacramental Life
SUNDAY MASS ONLINE: Please go to the following link on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MLCP1Mon 9th Nov Devonport 8:30am ... Pre-recording for Sunday Mass/The Dedication of the Lateran Basilica Tues 10th Nov Devonport 9:30am … St Leo the Great Wed 11th Nov Ulverstone 9:30am ... St Martin of Tours – ‘Remembrance Day’Thurs 12th Nov Devonport 12noon … St JosaphatFri 13th Nov Ulverstone 9:30am Sat 14th Nov Devonport 6.00pm Ulverstone 6:00pmSun 15th Nov Devonport 10:00am ... ALSO LIVESTREAM Ulverstone 10:00amIf 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 - https://universalis.com/mass.htm
Your prayers are asked for the sick:Mary Bryant, Kath Pearce, Edite McHugh, Paul Dilger, Jill Cotterill, Deb Edwards, Sydney Corbett, Delma Pieri, & …
Let us pray for those who have died recently:Peter Magill, Oscar van Leent, Stan Laffer, Fr Liam Floyd, Athol Brown, Dolly Eaves, Brian Robertson Let us pray for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 4th – 10th November, 2020Win Casey, Aurora Barker, Kevin Tolson, Annie Hood, Mary Rigney, Dean Turnbull, Nicole Fairbrother, Damian Matthews, Ken Lowry, Harril Watson, Jessie Hope, Shirley Winkler. May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen
PREGO REFLECTION
ON TODAY’S GOSPEL:
This week, I ponder this parable. It may take several days to explore the richness of Jesus’s words. In whatever way I am drawn to pray, I allow the Holy Spirit to guide me. I may like to picture myself as one of the bridesmaids, or perhaps as someone waiting with them. Noticing what happens as the story unfolds, allowing myself to be drawn into the events, I share my thoughts and feelings with the Lord as I am moved. What does it mean for me to wait? Am I patient and prepared for whatever may happen? Or am I anxious, tending to give up, or to try to sort everything out in my own way? I talk with the Lord about these moments in my life. What has the Lord to say to me? What happens when I hear the cry, ‘The bridegroom is here!’? I may visualise the joy, the agitation, the different reactions of the girls. Am I ready to meet the Lord as he comes to me in my life? Again, I speak with the Lord from my heart and listen to what he says to me. I end my time of prayer asking the Lord for whatever grace I need. I thank him.Glory be...
Weekly RamblingsOne of the challenges of the priesthood is the reality that I can be asked at any time to undertake a new appointment. When I first asked you as parishioners to pray that the Archbishop and Consultors would be able to make the best decisions for the Archdiocese I was not part of any intended moves.
About two months ago, there was a meeting of the Consultors looking at appointments due to the transfer of Fr Brian Nichols to the Seminary and the impending retirement of Fr Chris Hope. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending how people look at the result, by the end of the meeting I was to be appointed to the Kingston Channel Parish with the appointment to take effect on 11th Jan 2021.
My replacement is Fr Jaison Kuzhiyil, currently stationed in the Central Tasmania Parish and residing at New Norfolk. I will be seeing Fr Jaison at the Diocesan Retreat next week and will chat with him about a time when he can visit the Parish before the end of the year to meet some staff and parishioners.
Details of the other moves within the Diocese are included in this Month’s edition of the Catholic Standard – available today.
This week we received copies of the daily Advent-Christmastide Reflection booklet – ADORE – produced by the Diocese of Wollongong. The book is available this weekend and the cost is $3 a copy. As I have done in the past I commend this book as an excellent resource for prayer and reflection during this season of the Church’s year.
Take care, stay safe and stay sane,
and calling us to serve as your disciples.
as we use our gifts to serve you.
as we strive to bear witness
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 9th Nov Devonport 8:30am ... Pre-recording for Sunday Mass/The Dedication of the Lateran Basilica
Tues 10th Nov Devonport 9:30am … St Leo the Great
Wed 11th Nov Ulverstone 9:30am ... St Martin of Tours – ‘Remembrance Day’
Thurs 12th Nov Devonport 12noon … St Josaphat
Fri 13th Nov Ulverstone 9:30am
Sat 14th Nov Devonport 6.00pm
Ulverstone 6:00pm
Sun 15th Nov Devonport 10:00am ... ALSO LIVESTREAM
Ulverstone 10:00am
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 - https://universalis.com/mass.htm
Mary Bryant, Kath Pearce, Edite McHugh, Paul Dilger, Jill Cotterill, Deb Edwards, Sydney Corbett, Delma Pieri, & …
Let us pray for those who have died recently:
Peter Magill, Oscar van Leent, Stan Laffer, Fr Liam Floyd, Athol Brown, Dolly Eaves, Brian Robertson
Let us pray for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 4th – 10th November, 2020
Win Casey, Aurora Barker, Kevin Tolson, Annie Hood, Mary Rigney, Dean Turnbull, Nicole Fairbrother, Damian Matthews, Ken Lowry, Harril Watson, Jessie Hope, Shirley Winkler.
May the souls of the faithful departed,
through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen
PREGO REFLECTION
ON TODAY’S GOSPEL:
This week, I ponder this parable. It may take several days to explore the richness of Jesus’s words.
In whatever way I am drawn to pray, I allow the Holy Spirit to guide me.
I may like to picture myself as one of the bridesmaids, or perhaps as someone waiting with them.
Noticing what happens as the story unfolds, allowing myself to be drawn into the events, I share my thoughts and feelings with the Lord as I am moved.
What does it mean for me to wait?
Am I patient and prepared for whatever may happen?
Or am I anxious, tending to give up, or to try to sort everything out in my own way?
I talk with the Lord about these moments in my life.
What has the Lord to say to me?
What happens when I hear the cry, ‘The bridegroom is here!’?
I may visualise the joy, the agitation, the different reactions of the girls.
Am I ready to meet the Lord as he comes to me in my life?
Again, I speak with the Lord from my heart and listen to what he says to me.
I end my time of prayer asking the Lord for whatever grace I need. I thank him.
Glory be...
Weekly Ramblings
One of the challenges of the priesthood is the reality that I can be asked at any time to undertake a new appointment. When I first asked you as parishioners to pray that the Archbishop and Consultors would be able to make the best decisions for the Archdiocese I was not part of any intended moves.
About two months ago, there was a meeting of the Consultors looking at appointments due to the transfer of Fr Brian Nichols to the Seminary and the impending retirement of Fr Chris Hope. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending how people look at the result, by the end of the meeting I was to be appointed to the Kingston Channel Parish with the appointment to take effect on 11th Jan 2021.
My replacement is Fr Jaison Kuzhiyil, currently stationed in the Central Tasmania Parish and residing at New Norfolk. I will be seeing Fr Jaison at the Diocesan Retreat next week and will chat with him about a time when he can visit the Parish before the end of the year to meet some staff and parishioners.
Details of the other moves within the Diocese are included in this Month’s edition of the Catholic Standard – available today.
This week we received copies of the daily Advent-Christmastide Reflection booklet – ADORE – produced by the Diocese of Wollongong. The book is available this weekend and the cost is $3 a copy. As I have done in the past I commend this book as an excellent resource for prayer and reflection during this season of the Church’s year.
Take care, stay safe and stay sane,
Remembrance Day – Wednesday 11th
November, 2020
A SPLENDID SECRET A highly respected international speaker on spirituality will deliver the 2020 John Wallis Memorial Lecture from England, via zoom, on Tuesday 24 November, 7pm - 8:30 pm. Dr Gemma Simmonds CJ will discuss the spirituality of the Pope’s new encyclical in a lecture entitled “A Splendid Secret: Fratelli Tutti and the Transformation of Relationships”. Due to our Zoom capacity, registration will be required. Please email spirit@graciousgenerosity.com.au to indicate your intention to attend. Local COVID-19 protocols will determine the number of participants at any one location. Further information: Eva Dunn 0417 734 503
OUR LADY OF MERCY COLLEGE REUNION LUNCHFurner's Hotel (Chelsea Room) Ulverstone Friday 27th November for interested past pupils of Our Lady Of Mercy College Deloraine at 12 noon. Please phone Mary Owen 0429 354 406 to book a seat as numbers are limited to 20 people.
PALMS AUSTRALIA - REACHING BEYOND 2020People of all trades and professions are being requested by communities abroad seeking to build the capacity of their organisations and the skills of their people. Restrictions this year have made communities’ needs acute, but your assistance will help to develop self-reliance and sustainable solutions to poverty. Palms Australia will provide you with thorough preparation to ensure your readiness as travel resumes, and support on assignmentSee www.palms.org.au and talk to Roger on 0431 995 058, or email palms@palms.org.au
2021 COLUMBAN ART CALENDARS Calendars are available from the Piety Shop at OLOL Church Devonport and Sacred Heart Church Ulverstone. Cost $10.00 each. 
Thursday 12th November. Eyes down 7:30pm. Covid safe procedures will be followed.
Letter From Rome
The McCarrick Report: Don't Get Your Hopes Up
The Vatican and the Catholic hierarchy have a dismal record on being transparent- Robert Mickens, Rome, November 7, 2020. This article is from the La-Croix International website - you can access the site here but complete full access is via paid subscription
Call me skeptical.
But I do not expect the forthcoming report on Theodore McCarrick to sufficiently explain why no one at the Vatican or in the US hierarchy ever believed or fully investigated the longstanding rumors and accusations of sexual misconduct by the former Cardinal-Archbishop of Washington.
Eventually, it came out that "Uncle Ted" – as he urged his young acquaintances to call him – was not only sharing his bed with adult seminarians in the 1980s after he'd become a bishop in New Jersey, but he had sexually molested adolescents in the early 1970s when he was a priest in New York.
Pope Francis ordered an investigation in June 2018 and a month later removed McCarrick from the College of Cardinals. The pope then kicked him out of the priesthood in February 2019.
But the investigation dragged on. And many people wondered when the Vatican would actually conclude it and issue its findings.
The much-awaited "McCarrick Report" is readyWell, after more than two years, the much-awaited "McCarrick Report" is finally going to be published.
The Holy See Press Office notified journalists on Friday afternoon that the text – which it called the "Report on the Holy See's institutional knowledge and decision-making process related to former Cardinal Theodore Edgar McCarrick (from 1930 to 2017)" – will be released on Monday (Nov. 10) at 2 p.m. Rome-time – 8 a.m. in the Eastern United States.
When it first announced its investigation into how McCarrick was able to advance through the hierarchy despite is abusive behavior, the Vatican said the aim was "to ascertain all the relevant facts, to place them in their historical context and to evaluate them objectively".
"The Holy See is conscious that, from the examination of the facts and of the circumstances, it may emerge that choices were made that would not be consonant with a contemporary approach to such issues," the Vatican communiqué said.
It sounded almost like a cautionary note.
Vatican tries to show this will not be a whitewashIn fact, that was the same type of language many bishops in the United States and elsewhere had used in the early days of the abuse crises once they were discovered to have badly handled sex abuse cases.
Call it the "if I had known then what I know now" excuse.
Nonetheless, to try to show that the investigation into McCarrick would not be a whitewash, the Vatican quoted the words Pope Francis pronounced while visiting Philadelphia in 2015: "We will follow the path of truth wherever it may lead."
It underlined that "abuse and its cover-up" would "no longer be tolerated" – not even by bishops. And it said the men who wear the mitres would no longer get special treatment, because this would be "a form of clericalism that is no longer acceptable".
So we're all good, right?The Vatican communiqué made it sound like we had stepped into a new ecclesial world of zero tolerance, truth-telling, the end of cover-ups and no privileged treatment for bishops. It was the funeral dirge for clericalism.
Well, yes… and no.
There have been a number of bishops who seem to have been removed or demoted because they mishandled abuse claims. "Seem" because the Vatican never gives the reason for removing a bishop. Unless the man is of retirement (and even that is no guarantee), people are left to guess.
There have also been some prelates who have been suspended from ministry.
The very day the Vatican announced that it was releasing the McCarrick Report it was also revealed that the pope had suspended the 97-year-old retired Polish Cardinal Roman Gulbinowicz because of sexual abuse.
You gotta hand it to the Vatican. They're quick. They nabbed McCarrick when he was only 88.
Episcopal privilege still aliveBut there have been a lot of other instances where episcopal privilege still matters – like in Italy.
It was reported some weeks ago that Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, retired archbishop of Genoa and former president of the national bishops' conference, tried to cover-up a case of a priest credibly accused of sexual abuse.
Documents sent to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith show that he did so brazenly. Worse, all but only a few Italian media outlets have completely ignored this violation of clear Vatican directives.
And this contradicts the bold statement the Vatican made when it announced it was investigating the McCarrick saga.
Let's look at it again.
"Both abuse and its cover-up can no longer be tolerated and a different treatment for bishops who have committed or covered up abuse, in fact represents a form of clericalism that is no longer acceptable," it said.
Who conducted the investigation and wrote the report?There are other reasons to doubt that the McCarrick Report will really get to the bottom of things or produce some sort of "silver bullet" or "smoking gun".
One of them concerns its authors.
The Holy See Press Office confirmed to journalists once again on Monday that it was "prepared by the Secretariat of State by mandate of the pope".
In other words, McCarrick was investigated by the very organization that promoted him, one rung after the other, up the hierarchical ladder.
And it was not just the organization, but by the clerics and hierarchs of that organization.
This was an inside job by an old boys' network built on cronyism, the patron system and self-perpetuation. All got where they are the exact same way, including Pope Francis.
They got into the episcopacy because an already existing bishop took a shine to them and convinced enough other bishops that they were worthy to join the club.
Ordinary Catholics who have not undergone the "ontological change" of Holy Orders had little or nothing to say about it.
Saying little with a whole lot of wordsAnd, finally, there is the volume of the McCarrick Report. One reporter tweeted:"My sources tell me its length will be somewhere between Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, and equally grey."
One of those Vatican sources said that the executive summary alone runs over a dozen, single-spaced pages of A4 format paper.
Since this deals with a former cardinal and priest from the United States, then perhaps it is pertinent to recall another lengthy investigative summary called the Mueller Report.
It produced 448 pages of "conclusions" on an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election with the collusion of Donald Trump's campaign team.
And what exactly were those conclusions? It depends who you talk to.
But in the end, nobody's head rolled.
And it's not likely that any heads will roll because of the McCarrick Report, either.
Certainly not any that are topped with one of those pink, red or white skullcaps called a "zucchetto".
Meditation And Prayer
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
Contemplation is meeting as much reality as we can handle in its most simple and immediate form—without filters, judgments, or commentaries. The ego doesn’t trust this way of seeing, which is why it is so rare, “a narrow gate and a hard road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matthew 7:14, New Jerusalem Bible). The only way we can contemplate is by recognizing and relativizing our own compulsive mental grids—our practiced ways of judging, critiquing, blocking, and computing everything.
Depth psychologist David G. Benner offers the following framing of Christian contemplative practices in a way that can help deepen our experience of them: The Christian forms of meditation bring us to the question of the relationship between meditation and prayer. This is an important question because I think there are limits to what meditation can, in itself, accomplish that are overcome when meditation is placed within a context of prayer.
Although contemplative prayer and meditation may share many features, contemplative prayer is wordless openness to God. Hence it involves a relationship. It is this intentional openness to God while setting aside thoughts that makes contemplative prayer so deeply transformational.
Contemplative prayer always requires hospitality to your deep self, to the deep parts of your self. It demands the openness to receive whatever might arise in you and then gently release it into God’s hands. But in prayer you are not alone as you open yourself to whatever might emerge. You do so in a relationship that provides a safety and support in holding whatever emerges. That which arises might come with a flood of emotional intensity. Sometimes, being still before self and God releases a torrent of emotions. Tears may be intermixed with joy. . . . But whatever emerges in silence and stillness before God emerges in the place within you in which you are held within God. It emerges, therefore, within the context of prayer, whether or not you are thinking of God or talking to God. Your openness to God makes it prayer.
Thomas Keating describes what happens in stillness and silence before God in unworded presence as divine therapy. It may involve an unloading of the unconscious, but this is only the visible face of the invisible process of reworking your unconscious, a process that is going on as you sit in stillness before God and yourself. . . . This isn’t the time to try to understand the things that float to the surface of your consciousness. Instead, it’s the time to simply note them and then release them to God. But as you recognize their presence, you become aware of what exists within you, and you have an opportunity to peek at the deep hidden work of healing and transformation that God is doing in your soul. This is the transformational way in which contemplative prayer works.
David G. Benner, Spirituality and the Awakening Self (Brazos Press: 2012), 226-227. Structure, Ritual, And Habit As Anchoring Love, Prayer And Service
In his book, The Second Mountain David Brooks suggests that a key to sustaining fidelity in any vocation is to build a structure of behavior for those moments when love falters. He’s right.
Anybody who has made a commitment to be faithful for the long haul inside a marriage, a friendship, a faith community, or a vocation to serve others, will need more than initial enthusiasm, bare-footed sincerity, affective energy, and good resolutions to sustain himself or herself on that road. It’s one thing to have a honeymoon with someone, it’s another to be in a marriage over many years. It’s one thing to be an enthusiastic neophyte on a spiritual journey, it’s another thing to remain faithful inside that journey for seventy or eighty years. And it’s one thing to go out for a season and serve meals to the homeless, it’s something else to be Dorothy Day.
So the question is: how do we sustain our initial enthusiasm, sincerity, affective energy, and good resolutions through the boredom, heartbreak, misunderstanding, tiredness, and temptations all of us will undergo in our lives, whether that be in our marriage, our vocation, our church life, our prayer life, or our service to others?
That question was put to me recently, speaking to a group of young seminarians, I shared that I had just celebrated forty-eight years of ministry. The seminarians peppered me with questions: What’s the secret? How do you get through the rough times? How do you sustain good intention, good will, and good energy year after year? How do you sustain your prayer life over forty or fifty years?
I answered with an insight from Dietrich Bonhoeffer who, whenever he officiated at a wedding, would tell the couple: Today you are very much in love and think your love will sustain your marriage. It can’t. But your marriage can sustain your love. I advised the seminarians in the same way: don’t trust your present enthusiasm and good energy to sustain your priesthood; let your priesthood sustain your enthusiasm and energy. What’s at stake here?
A genuine commitment in faith, love, or service becomes a ritual container, an ark, like Noah’s, that existentially locks you in. And the fact that you’re locked in is exactly what makes the commitment work. You enter naïvely, believing that your good feelings and affective energies will sustain you. They won’t. Inevitably they will be worn down by time, familiarity, boredom, misunderstanding, tiredness, wound, and new obsessions that emotionally tempt you elsewhere. So how can you sustain yourself in a commitment through periods of dryness? David Brook’s answer is a good one – by building a structure of behavior for exactly those moments.
How do you do that? Through routine, ritual, and habit. Anchor your person and your commitment in ritual habits that steady and hold you beyond your feelings on any given day. Set rituals for yourself, certain ritual behaviors, which you will do regularly no matter how you feel.
For me, as a priest, some of these are pre-set. As a priest, you are to daily pray the Office of the Church as a prayer for the world, no matter how you feel. You are to celebrate the Eucharist for others regularly, irrespective of whether or not this is personally meaningful to you on any given day. You are to do some private prayer daily, particularly when you don’t feel like it. The list goes on. These rituals give you structure and healthy routines, and they are needed because in the priesthood as in every other vocation, there are times of fervor when feelings are enough to sustain you; however there are also desert times, bitter times, angry times, times when love falters. It’s then that a structure of behavior can steady and sustain you.
The same holds true for marriage. Couples have to build a structure of behavior for those times when love falters. To name one such ritual: a wife and husband need to have some ritual expression of affection when they wish each other a good day as they part each morning, no matter their emotions and feelings on a given day. That ritual is a container, an ark, which locks them in and holds them together until a better season and better feelings return. Ritual can sustain love when it falters.
In understanding this, we need beware of “Job’s friends”, that is, beware of the various books and gurus on spirituality, prayer, and marriage that give you the impression there’s something wrong with you if your enthusiasm and emotional affectivity are not the glue that daily sustains you in your commitment. Simply put, these are books written by spiritual novices and marriage manuals written by someone confusing a honeymoon for a marriage. Enthusiasm and good feelings are wonderful, but they can’t sustain you through a marathon. For a marathon you need to have long-practiced strategies to carry you through the long tiring miles in the middle and at the end.
Rene Noel Girard RIP
This week, five years ago, we learned of the death of ‘the new Darwin of the human sciences’, René Girard. Michael Kirwan SJ, author of Discovering Girard, pays tribute to a deeply committed and humble Catholic theologian who declared that ‘violence is the heart and secret soul of the sacred’. Michael Kirwan SJ is Head of Theology at Heythrop College, University of London. He is the author of Discovering Girard (Cowley, 2005).This article is taken from the ThinkingFaith.org website where you can find a wide range of articles by clicking here
René Noël Théophile Girard was born in Avignon on Christmas Day, 1923. He died in California on 4 November 2015. He leaves behind Martha, his wife of 64 years, three children, and nine grandchildren. As one of the most important Catholic thinkers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, he has left a precious intellectual legacy as ‘the new Darwin of the human sciences’, whose books offer a bold, sweeping vision of human nature, human history and human destiny.
The comparison with Charles Darwin is apt, as Girard’s work similarly sketches out human origins. However, it has a specific focus on the origins of human violence, which for Girard is tied up with the origins of all cultural forms, even – and especially – religion. In his most famous book, Violence and the Sacred (French original, 1972), he declared that ‘violence is the heart and secret soul of the sacred’. His work ever since has been a call, and a warning, to take seriously the dangerous proximity of religion and violence. As part of their evolutionary programming, human beings have a ‘fatal attraction’ to competition and rivalry (one may speculate whether this has anything to do with having to share a birthday with Jesus …), which, if unchecked, will lead to violence. The conflict he has in mind is often contained by and contained in religious practices: ‘sacrifice’, ‘penal atonement’, ‘holy wars’, ‘apocalypse’, and other practices oriented toward salvation. At the centre is the figure of the ‘scapegoat’, the victim who is marginalised, even exterminated, so that the community can survive.
Such a theory seems to be very ‘anti-religious’, and yet the thinker behind it was a deeply committed and humble Christian thinker. Girard returned to his Catholic faith in 1959, when he realised the importance of the scriptures in showing us the truth about the human situation, and what we needed to do about it. The gospels show us Christ as the Lamb of God who ‘enacts’ the place of the scapegoated victim, so as to expose once and for all the truth of ‘butchers pretending to be sacrificers’.
For many years his Christian commitment made Girard an unfashionable thinker in the secular academy, though his election in 2005 to the prestigious Académie Francaise indicates that his life’s work had received proper recognition. I would like to offer just a few personal memories. First of all, though his work was initially not well-received by the French Jesuits (it was unfavourably reviewed in 1972), the fruitful interaction with other Jesuits in the course of his career has been very important. Above all, we need to mention his close collaboration and friendship with Raymund Schwager SJ, Professor of Theology at the University of Innsbruck, as well as other members of that faculty.
Professor Girard was very grateful to to the British Jesuits for their hospitality to him during three visits to England. At the suggestion of Billy Hewett SJ, and at the invitation of Joe Munitiz SJ, he was invited to Campion Hall to give the D’Arcy lecture in 1996. A decision to switch the venue, from the Campion Hall library to the university exam school, was fortunate, as 200 people turned up to hear him give an extraordinary lecture on ‘Violence, Victims and Christianity’. Another highlight on this occasion was his first visit to Stratford; he has always maintained that the drama of Shakespeare (especially A Midsummer Night’s Dream) was inspirational for his theory of mimetic desire. His book on Shakespeare, A Theatre of Envy, remains a masterful introduction to his theory for an English-speaking audience.
The second of his two visits to Heythrop College was to receive an honorary doctorate from the college. While this was a splendid and gracious affair, it as clear that he was much more nervous about the ceremony of acceptance at the Académie Francaise a few days later. His good-humoured charm was evident throughout, if not always credible, as for example when he assured us that London was a more beautiful city than Paris! Though he was sardonic at times about academic life and its absurdities, he went out of his way to listen to young scholars giving papers at conferences and give them encouragement, something which I know from my own personal experience. During one conversation after I had started teaching at Heythrop, he asked me: ‘And do you enjoy it?’ I don’t remember what I said; but this remains the only time anyone has asked me that question.
The ‘immense intellectual holiness’ is conveyed by the attitude he showed toward his own theory: at times he was like an evangelical about his insights, but he was also capable of being playful, even offhand:
People are against my theory, because it is at the same time an avant-garde and a Christian theory … Theories are expendable. They should be criticized. When people tell me my work is too systematic, I say, ‘I make it as systematic as possible for you to be able to prove it wrong.’Underlying this challenge is a serene confidence that the truth he is proclaiming is not after all ‘his’ truth, but the truth of God’s revelation, made available to us as a sign of our troubled times.
Girard is a thinker who combined an utter lack of self-importance with the boldest intellectual risk-taking. A Stanford colleague, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, declares that Girard is:a great, towering figure – no ostentatiousness. … Despite the intellectual structures built around him, he's a solitaire. His work has a steel-like quality– strong, contoured, clear. It's like a rock. It will be there and it will last.
A SPLENDID SECRET
A highly respected international speaker on spirituality will deliver the 2020 John Wallis Memorial Lecture from England, via zoom, on Tuesday 24 November, 7pm - 8:30 pm. Dr Gemma Simmonds CJ will discuss the spirituality of the Pope’s new encyclical in a lecture entitled “A Splendid Secret: Fratelli Tutti and the Transformation of Relationships”.
Due to our Zoom capacity, registration will be required. Please email spirit@graciousgenerosity.com.au to indicate your intention to attend. Local COVID-19 protocols will determine the number of participants at any one location. Further information: Eva Dunn 0417 734 503
OUR LADY OF MERCY COLLEGE REUNION LUNCH
Furner's Hotel (Chelsea Room) Ulverstone Friday 27th November for interested past pupils of Our Lady Of Mercy College Deloraine at 12 noon. Please phone Mary Owen 0429 354 406 to book a seat as numbers are limited to 20 people.
PALMS AUSTRALIA - REACHING BEYOND 2020
People of all trades and professions are being requested by communities abroad seeking to build the capacity of their organisations and the skills of their people. Restrictions this year have made communities’ needs acute, but your assistance will help to develop self-reliance and sustainable solutions to poverty. Palms Australia will provide you with thorough preparation to ensure your readiness as travel resumes, and support on assignment
See www.palms.org.au and talk to Roger on 0431 995 058, or email palms@palms.org.au
2021 COLUMBAN ART CALENDARS
Calendars are available from the Piety Shop at OLOL Church Devonport and Sacred Heart Church Ulverstone. Cost $10.00 each.
Thursday 12th November.
Eyes down 7:30pm.
Covid safe procedures will be followed.
Letter From Rome
The McCarrick Report: Don't Get Your Hopes Up
The Vatican and the Catholic hierarchy have a dismal record on being transparent
- Robert Mickens, Rome, November 7, 2020.
This article is from the La-Croix International website - you can access the site here but complete full access is via paid subscription
Call me skeptical.
But I do not expect the forthcoming report on Theodore McCarrick to sufficiently explain why no one at the Vatican or in the US hierarchy ever believed or fully investigated the longstanding rumors and accusations of sexual misconduct by the former Cardinal-Archbishop of Washington.
Eventually, it came out that "Uncle Ted" – as he urged his young acquaintances to call him – was not only sharing his bed with adult seminarians in the 1980s after he'd become a bishop in New Jersey, but he had sexually molested adolescents in the early 1970s when he was a priest in New York.
Pope Francis ordered an investigation in June 2018 and a month later removed McCarrick from the College of Cardinals. The pope then kicked him out of the priesthood in February 2019.
But the investigation dragged on. And many people wondered when the Vatican would actually conclude it and issue its findings.
The much-awaited "McCarrick Report" is ready
Well, after more than two years, the much-awaited "McCarrick Report" is finally going to be published.
The Holy See Press Office notified journalists on Friday afternoon that the text – which it called the "Report on the Holy See's institutional knowledge and decision-making process related to former Cardinal Theodore Edgar McCarrick (from 1930 to 2017)" – will be released on Monday (Nov. 10) at 2 p.m. Rome-time – 8 a.m. in the Eastern United States.
When it first announced its investigation into how McCarrick was able to advance through the hierarchy despite is abusive behavior, the Vatican said the aim was "to ascertain all the relevant facts, to place them in their historical context and to evaluate them objectively".
"The Holy See is conscious that, from the examination of the facts and of the circumstances, it may emerge that choices were made that would not be consonant with a contemporary approach to such issues," the Vatican communiqué said.
It sounded almost like a cautionary note.
Vatican tries to show this will not be a whitewash
In fact, that was the same type of language many bishops in the United States and elsewhere had used in the early days of the abuse crises once they were discovered to have badly handled sex abuse cases.
Call it the "if I had known then what I know now" excuse.
Nonetheless, to try to show that the investigation into McCarrick would not be a whitewash, the Vatican quoted the words Pope Francis pronounced while visiting Philadelphia in 2015: "We will follow the path of truth wherever it may lead."
It underlined that "abuse and its cover-up" would "no longer be tolerated" – not even by bishops. And it said the men who wear the mitres would no longer get special treatment, because this would be "a form of clericalism that is no longer acceptable".
So we're all good, right?
The Vatican communiqué made it sound like we had stepped into a new ecclesial world of zero tolerance, truth-telling, the end of cover-ups and no privileged treatment for bishops. It was the funeral dirge for clericalism.
Well, yes… and no.
There have been a number of bishops who seem to have been removed or demoted because they mishandled abuse claims. "Seem" because the Vatican never gives the reason for removing a bishop. Unless the man is of retirement (and even that is no guarantee), people are left to guess.
There have also been some prelates who have been suspended from ministry.
The very day the Vatican announced that it was releasing the McCarrick Report it was also revealed that the pope had suspended the 97-year-old retired Polish Cardinal Roman Gulbinowicz because of sexual abuse.
You gotta hand it to the Vatican. They're quick. They nabbed McCarrick when he was only 88.
Episcopal privilege still alive
But there have been a lot of other instances where episcopal privilege still matters – like in Italy.
It was reported some weeks ago that Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, retired archbishop of Genoa and former president of the national bishops' conference, tried to cover-up a case of a priest credibly accused of sexual abuse.
Documents sent to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith show that he did so brazenly. Worse, all but only a few Italian media outlets have completely ignored this violation of clear Vatican directives.
And this contradicts the bold statement the Vatican made when it announced it was investigating the McCarrick saga.
Let's look at it again.
"Both abuse and its cover-up can no longer be tolerated and a different treatment for bishops who have committed or covered up abuse, in fact represents a form of clericalism that is no longer acceptable," it said.
Who conducted the investigation and wrote the report?
There are other reasons to doubt that the McCarrick Report will really get to the bottom of things or produce some sort of "silver bullet" or "smoking gun".
One of them concerns its authors.
The Holy See Press Office confirmed to journalists once again on Monday that it was "prepared by the Secretariat of State by mandate of the pope".
In other words, McCarrick was investigated by the very organization that promoted him, one rung after the other, up the hierarchical ladder.
And it was not just the organization, but by the clerics and hierarchs of that organization.
This was an inside job by an old boys' network built on cronyism, the patron system and self-perpetuation. All got where they are the exact same way, including Pope Francis.
They got into the episcopacy because an already existing bishop took a shine to them and convinced enough other bishops that they were worthy to join the club.
Ordinary Catholics who have not undergone the "ontological change" of Holy Orders had little or nothing to say about it.
Saying little with a whole lot of words
And, finally, there is the volume of the McCarrick Report. One reporter tweeted:
"My sources tell me its length will be somewhere between Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, and equally grey."
One of those Vatican sources said that the executive summary alone runs over a dozen, single-spaced pages of A4 format paper.
Since this deals with a former cardinal and priest from the United States, then perhaps it is pertinent to recall another lengthy investigative summary called the Mueller Report.
It produced 448 pages of "conclusions" on an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election with the collusion of Donald Trump's campaign team.
And what exactly were those conclusions? It depends who you talk to.
But in the end, nobody's head rolled.
And it's not likely that any heads will roll because of the McCarrick Report, either.
Certainly not any that are topped with one of those pink, red or white skullcaps called a "zucchetto".
Meditation And Prayer
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
Contemplation is meeting as much reality as we can handle in its most simple and immediate form—without filters, judgments, or commentaries. The ego doesn’t trust this way of seeing, which is why it is so rare, “a narrow gate and a hard road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matthew 7:14, New Jerusalem Bible). The only way we can contemplate is by recognizing and relativizing our own compulsive mental grids—our practiced ways of judging, critiquing, blocking, and computing everything.
Depth psychologist David G. Benner offers the following framing of Christian contemplative practices in a way that can help deepen our experience of them:
The Christian forms of meditation bring us to the question of the relationship between meditation and prayer. This is an important question because I think there are limits to what meditation can, in itself, accomplish that are overcome when meditation is placed within a context of prayer.
Although contemplative prayer and meditation may share many features, contemplative prayer is wordless openness to God. Hence it involves a relationship. It is this intentional openness to God while setting aside thoughts that makes contemplative prayer so deeply transformational.
Contemplative prayer always requires hospitality to your deep self, to the deep parts of your self. It demands the openness to receive whatever might arise in you and then gently release it into God’s hands. But in prayer you are not alone as you open yourself to whatever might emerge. You do so in a relationship that provides a safety and support in holding whatever emerges. That which arises might come with a flood of emotional intensity. Sometimes, being still before self and God releases a torrent of emotions. Tears may be intermixed with joy. . . . But whatever emerges in silence and stillness before God emerges in the place within you in which you are held within God. It emerges, therefore, within the context of prayer, whether or not you are thinking of God or talking to God. Your openness to God makes it prayer.
Thomas Keating describes what happens in stillness and silence before God in unworded presence as divine therapy. It may involve an unloading of the unconscious, but this is only the visible face of the invisible process of reworking your unconscious, a process that is going on as you sit in stillness before God and yourself. . . . This isn’t the time to try to understand the things that float to the surface of your consciousness. Instead, it’s the time to simply note them and then release them to God. But as you recognize their presence, you become aware of what exists within you, and you have an opportunity to peek at the deep hidden work of healing and transformation that God is doing in your soul. This is the transformational way in which contemplative prayer works.
David G. Benner, Spirituality and the Awakening Self (Brazos Press: 2012), 226-227.
Structure, Ritual, And Habit As Anchoring Love, Prayer And Service
In his book, The Second Mountain David Brooks suggests that a key to sustaining fidelity in any vocation is to build a structure of behavior for those moments when love falters. He’s right.
Anybody who has made a commitment to be faithful for the long haul inside a marriage, a friendship, a faith community, or a vocation to serve others, will need more than initial enthusiasm, bare-footed sincerity, affective energy, and good resolutions to sustain himself or herself on that road. It’s one thing to have a honeymoon with someone, it’s another to be in a marriage over many years. It’s one thing to be an enthusiastic neophyte on a spiritual journey, it’s another thing to remain faithful inside that journey for seventy or eighty years. And it’s one thing to go out for a season and serve meals to the homeless, it’s something else to be Dorothy Day.
So the question is: how do we sustain our initial enthusiasm, sincerity, affective energy, and good resolutions through the boredom, heartbreak, misunderstanding, tiredness, and temptations all of us will undergo in our lives, whether that be in our marriage, our vocation, our church life, our prayer life, or our service to others?
That question was put to me recently, speaking to a group of young seminarians, I shared that I had just celebrated forty-eight years of ministry. The seminarians peppered me with questions: What’s the secret? How do you get through the rough times? How do you sustain good intention, good will, and good energy year after year? How do you sustain your prayer life over forty or fifty years?
I answered with an insight from Dietrich Bonhoeffer who, whenever he officiated at a wedding, would tell the couple: Today you are very much in love and think your love will sustain your marriage. It can’t. But your marriage can sustain your love. I advised the seminarians in the same way: don’t trust your present enthusiasm and good energy to sustain your priesthood; let your priesthood sustain your enthusiasm and energy. What’s at stake here?
A genuine commitment in faith, love, or service becomes a ritual container, an ark, like Noah’s, that existentially locks you in. And the fact that you’re locked in is exactly what makes the commitment work. You enter naïvely, believing that your good feelings and affective energies will sustain you. They won’t. Inevitably they will be worn down by time, familiarity, boredom, misunderstanding, tiredness, wound, and new obsessions that emotionally tempt you elsewhere. So how can you sustain yourself in a commitment through periods of dryness? David Brook’s answer is a good one – by building a structure of behavior for exactly those moments.
How do you do that? Through routine, ritual, and habit. Anchor your person and your commitment in ritual habits that steady and hold you beyond your feelings on any given day. Set rituals for yourself, certain ritual behaviors, which you will do regularly no matter how you feel.
For me, as a priest, some of these are pre-set. As a priest, you are to daily pray the Office of the Church as a prayer for the world, no matter how you feel. You are to celebrate the Eucharist for others regularly, irrespective of whether or not this is personally meaningful to you on any given day. You are to do some private prayer daily, particularly when you don’t feel like it. The list goes on. These rituals give you structure and healthy routines, and they are needed because in the priesthood as in every other vocation, there are times of fervor when feelings are enough to sustain you; however there are also desert times, bitter times, angry times, times when love falters. It’s then that a structure of behavior can steady and sustain you.
The same holds true for marriage. Couples have to build a structure of behavior for those times when love falters. To name one such ritual: a wife and husband need to have some ritual expression of affection when they wish each other a good day as they part each morning, no matter their emotions and feelings on a given day. That ritual is a container, an ark, which locks them in and holds them together until a better season and better feelings return. Ritual can sustain love when it falters.
In understanding this, we need beware of “Job’s friends”, that is, beware of the various books and gurus on spirituality, prayer, and marriage that give you the impression there’s something wrong with you if your enthusiasm and emotional affectivity are not the glue that daily sustains you in your commitment. Simply put, these are books written by spiritual novices and marriage manuals written by someone confusing a honeymoon for a marriage. Enthusiasm and good feelings are wonderful, but they can’t sustain you through a marathon. For a marathon you need to have long-practiced strategies to carry you through the long tiring miles in the middle and at the end.
Rene Noel Girard RIP
This week, five years ago, we learned of the death of ‘the new Darwin of the human sciences’, René Girard. Michael Kirwan SJ, author of Discovering Girard, pays tribute to a deeply committed and humble Catholic theologian who declared that ‘violence is the heart and secret soul of the sacred’. Michael Kirwan SJ is Head of Theology at Heythrop College, University of London. He is the author of Discovering Girard (Cowley, 2005).
This article is taken from the ThinkingFaith.org website where you can find a wide range of articles by clicking here
René Noël Théophile Girard was born in Avignon on Christmas Day, 1923. He died in California on 4 November 2015. He leaves behind Martha, his wife of 64 years, three children, and nine grandchildren. As one of the most important Catholic thinkers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, he has left a precious intellectual legacy as ‘the new Darwin of the human sciences’, whose books offer a bold, sweeping vision of human nature, human history and human destiny.
The comparison with Charles Darwin is apt, as Girard’s work similarly sketches out human origins. However, it has a specific focus on the origins of human violence, which for Girard is tied up with the origins of all cultural forms, even – and especially – religion. In his most famous book, Violence and the Sacred (French original, 1972), he declared that ‘violence is the heart and secret soul of the sacred’. His work ever since has been a call, and a warning, to take seriously the dangerous proximity of religion and violence. As part of their evolutionary programming, human beings have a ‘fatal attraction’ to competition and rivalry (one may speculate whether this has anything to do with having to share a birthday with Jesus …), which, if unchecked, will lead to violence. The conflict he has in mind is often contained by and contained in religious practices: ‘sacrifice’, ‘penal atonement’, ‘holy wars’, ‘apocalypse’, and other practices oriented toward salvation. At the centre is the figure of the ‘scapegoat’, the victim who is marginalised, even exterminated, so that the community can survive.
Such a theory seems to be very ‘anti-religious’, and yet the thinker behind it was a deeply committed and humble Christian thinker. Girard returned to his Catholic faith in 1959, when he realised the importance of the scriptures in showing us the truth about the human situation, and what we needed to do about it. The gospels show us Christ as the Lamb of God who ‘enacts’ the place of the scapegoated victim, so as to expose once and for all the truth of ‘butchers pretending to be sacrificers’.
For many years his Christian commitment made Girard an unfashionable thinker in the secular academy, though his election in 2005 to the prestigious Académie Francaise indicates that his life’s work had received proper recognition. I would like to offer just a few personal memories. First of all, though his work was initially not well-received by the French Jesuits (it was unfavourably reviewed in 1972), the fruitful interaction with other Jesuits in the course of his career has been very important. Above all, we need to mention his close collaboration and friendship with Raymund Schwager SJ, Professor of Theology at the University of Innsbruck, as well as other members of that faculty.
Professor Girard was very grateful to to the British Jesuits for their hospitality to him during three visits to England. At the suggestion of Billy Hewett SJ, and at the invitation of Joe Munitiz SJ, he was invited to Campion Hall to give the D’Arcy lecture in 1996. A decision to switch the venue, from the Campion Hall library to the university exam school, was fortunate, as 200 people turned up to hear him give an extraordinary lecture on ‘Violence, Victims and Christianity’. Another highlight on this occasion was his first visit to Stratford; he has always maintained that the drama of Shakespeare (especially A Midsummer Night’s Dream) was inspirational for his theory of mimetic desire. His book on Shakespeare, A Theatre of Envy, remains a masterful introduction to his theory for an English-speaking audience.
The second of his two visits to Heythrop College was to receive an honorary doctorate from the college. While this was a splendid and gracious affair, it as clear that he was much more nervous about the ceremony of acceptance at the Académie Francaise a few days later. His good-humoured charm was evident throughout, if not always credible, as for example when he assured us that London was a more beautiful city than Paris! Though he was sardonic at times about academic life and its absurdities, he went out of his way to listen to young scholars giving papers at conferences and give them encouragement, something which I know from my own personal experience. During one conversation after I had started teaching at Heythrop, he asked me: ‘And do you enjoy it?’ I don’t remember what I said; but this remains the only time anyone has asked me that question.
The ‘immense intellectual holiness’ is conveyed by the attitude he showed toward his own theory: at times he was like an evangelical about his insights, but he was also capable of being playful, even offhand:
People are against my theory, because it is at the same time an avant-garde and a Christian theory … Theories are expendable. They should be criticized. When people tell me my work is too systematic, I say, ‘I make it as systematic as possible for you to be able to prove it wrong.’
Underlying this challenge is a serene confidence that the truth he is proclaiming is not after all ‘his’ truth, but the truth of God’s revelation, made available to us as a sign of our troubled times.
Girard is a thinker who combined an utter lack of self-importance with the boldest intellectual risk-taking. A Stanford colleague, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, declares that Girard is:
a great, towering figure – no ostentatiousness. … Despite the intellectual structures built around him, he's a solitaire. His work has a steel-like quality– strong, contoured, clear. It's like a rock. It will be there and it will last.
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