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 16th Nov NO MASS ... St Margaret, St Gertrude Tues 17th Nov Devonport 9:30am … St Elizabeth of HungaryWed 18th Nov Ulverstone 9:30am ...Thurs 19th Nov Devonport 8.30am ... pre-recording of Sunday Mass Devonport 12noon … St JosaphatFri 20th Nov Ulverstone 9:30am Sat 21st Nov Devonport 6.00pm Ulverstone 6:00pmSun 22nd 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 Bryan, Judy Redgrove, Kath Pearce, Edite McHugh, Jill Cotterill, Deb Edwards & …
Let us pray for those who have died recently:Paul Dilger, Peter Magill, Oscar van Leent, Stan Laffer, Dolly Eaves
Let us pray for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 11th – 17th November, 2020Finbarr Kennedy, Ron Garnsey, James William Monaghan, James McLagan, Margaret Kenney, Catherine Fraser, James Malcolm Monaghan, Olive Purton, Terrence Smith, Freda Morgan, Joe Stolp, Margaret Clarke, Terry Matthews, Denis McCormack
May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen
PREGO REFLECTION ON TODAY’S GOSPELAfter coming to some inner quiet in the way that works best for me, I read the shortened version of this well-known parable several times.I may want to read the full version in my missal or bible at a later time.What strikes me as I read the text? Perhaps there’s a phrase I haven’t ‘heard’ before? I stay with it for a few moments. I may want to consider my own ‘talents’. I notice that everyone has been given at least one talent. Can I name mine? What have I done with my talents? … What do I do with them? ... What will I do?In what ways have others been affected as I use them? I ponder, and tell the Lord how I feel.I listen to the Lord calling me his good and faithful servant, giving me his trust, and inviting me to share in his happiness. How do I want to respond? With gratitude, disbelief, yearning …? In time, I slowly conclude my prayer: Glory be to the Father....
Weekly RamblingsOnly a few weeks to go and we will start our advent journey, a joyful period of time in which we are able to prepare ourselves for the birth of Christ. A moment of such tremendous importance it is still celebrated over 2000 years later.
But what should we do with the last couple of weeks before Advent? As the year is slowly drawing to a close, I doubt there are many who will miss the year 2020, (maybe the odd Richmond Tigers supporter).
It was Socrates, an early Greek philosopher who said, “The unexamined life is not worth living”. As we get closer to the start of Advent, we are invited to look back over the year that was and to reflect on what has been, not the big world shattering events, but the little moments in our lives. Those moments where we truly were the Disciples of Christ, we are called to be. As well as those moments when we might not have lived up to the title of disciple. We do this not to be negative but to truly live our lives to the full.
As mentioned, we will soon make our first steps on our journey of Advent and would encourage everyone to make this a time of prayer, a path walked with God. To help with this, last week we received copies of the daily Advent-Christmastide Reflection booklet – ADORE – produced by the Diocese of Wollongong. The book was available over the weekend and cost $3 a copy. And we were delighted to see many people take the opportunity to grab a copy after Mass, but sadly it means we have very few copies left. If you would like a copy, please let us know and we will endeavour to supply one. But supply is limited, so don’t tarry.
Fr Mike commends this book as an excellent resource for prayer and reflection during this season of the Church’s year.
From all at the Parish Office, we wish you a safe and blessed week, God Bless!!
Fr Steven
During the week, Australia celebrated the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. NAIDOC is celebrated not only in Indigenous communities, but by Australians from all walks of life. The theme for this year is 'Always was, always will be.' This theme has been developed to shine a focus on the length of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander occupation of Australia.
We encourage you to find ways to appreciate the wealth and breadth of Indigenous Nations, languages and knowledges of this continent.
Mersey Leven Parish would like to congratulate Gilbert & Shirley Evans on their 60th Wedding Anniversary, Thursday 19th November, 2020.Love is patient, Love is kind, Love rejoices in the truth, Love never ends.
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. Phone Mary Owen 0429 354 406
2021 COLUMBAN ART CALENDARS The Calendars available from the Piety Shop at OLOL Church Devonport and Sacred Heart Church Ulverstone. Cost $10.00 each.
CHRISTMAS CARDS Cards are available from the Piety Shop at Our Lady of Lourdes Church Devonport.
BECOMING MOTIVATED DISCIPLES This Advent the Verbum Domini Institute is focusing on how to live out the Gospel more fully through motivated Christian Discipleship. Join this four week short course to hear and discuss the meaning of Christian discipleship with the aim of developing a renewed commitment to Jesus Christ in preparation for his birth at Christmas. When: Tuesdays 24th Nov., 1st, 8th & 15th Dec. Time: 10.30am-12pm. Cost: Free. Register: christine.wood@aohtas.org.au or call 03-6208-6236. Where: online via Zoom.
CONCERNED CATHOLICS TASMANIA INC (CCT) INVITATION “Sharing the Journey: Co-Responsibility in Our Church.” CCT invites you to a regional gathering focussing on the report “The Light from the Southern Cross – Promoting Co-Responsible Governance in the Catholic Church in Australia”. This was commissioned by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and Religious Superiors, as recommended in the final report by the Royal Commission. Key aspects of that report will be discussed, with some recorded input from Australian theologian Father Richard Lennan – one of the four international consultants who drew up the final version. Find out more and have your say Saturday 5th December - 10am to 12noon at Star of the Sea Hall, Mount St Burnie. Register at sue.hyslop@icloud.com
VIRTUAL WAY TO ST JAMES PILGRIMAGEMake your way through natural surroundings in a meditative way anywhere in the world on 9th – 10th January 2021. Join this Global “El Camino de Santiago” in the Spirit of the Annual Pilgrimage to St James Church in Cygnet in the Huon Valley. Facebook link: https://www.facebook.com/waytostjamescygnet/Website link: https://www.waytostjames.com.au/
Thursday 19th November. Eyes down 7:30pm. Covid safe procedures will be followed.
Letter From Rome
Profiles In Clericalism
The real flaw of the McCarrick Report- Robert Mickens, Rome, November 14, 2020. This article is from the La-Croix International website - you can access the site here but complete full access is via paid subscription
In the end, it was just about what was to be expected.
The exceedingly long and long awaited report on the history of Theodore McCarrick's rise to the penultimate rung of the Catholic hierarchy is now out.
And it's being interpreted in almost as many ways as the number of men who are currently members of the College of Cardinals, that exclusive club from which McCarrick was eventually expelled for sexual abusing at least one underage boy.
But, in fact, the so-called "McCarrick Report" has revealed very little that many people inside the Church did not already know or suspect.
Up until two years ago when the Archdiocese of New York finally determined that the former cardinal had abused a minor in the 1970s, there were longstanding rumors about McCarrick's habit of sleeping with adult seminarians.
But in the newly released report, the Vatican wrings its hands, regretting that for all these years it was simply the case that no one could actually verify that Uncle Ted was sharing his bed with these young candidates for the priesthood whom he called his "nephews".
Of the clericsCountless priests, bishops and cardinals even claimed that, gosh, they'd never even heard about any of that.
Those that had heard about it, including a few popes, simply didn't want to believe that such talk was anything more than just petty gossip. Or they rationalized it by claiming that, well, at least the seminarians were adults. McCarrick wasn't diddling kids.
Negligence, gullibility, willful blindness, refusal to listen to accusations, attempts to discredit accusers, and lies of various magnitudes.
These are part of the potpourri of excuses the McCarrick Report furnishes, sometimes in numbing detail, to explain how a classic Church careerist climbed the ecclesiastical ladder to become the Cardinal Archbishop of Washington.
But nothing was more determinative to Uncle Ted's rise in the clerical Church, the report assures us, than his own skills of deception.
My Lord, he was even able to dupe John Paul II. He actually was able to pull the wool over the sagacious eyes of John Paul the Great!
As for poor Benedict XVI, after he had pretty solid proof that McCarrick was sleeping with seminarians, he opted for the discreet and merciful measures of quietly retiring the cardinal and instructing (though never forcing) him to keep a low profile.
Then came Pope Francis. He didn't seem to be too concerned about what the ageing American was up to and figured he'd just let things be as his Bavarian predecessor had left them.
And then, finally, a witness came forward with the pedophilia claim.
The wheels of Church justice went into overdrive and, within a little over a year, Francis removed McCarrick from the College of Cardinals and then from the priesthood.
When there was rock solid proof, the pope immediately took decisive action.
This is the narrative the authors of the report are trying to sell us. And, it seems, there are a lot of people who are buying it.
Some have hailed the McCarrick Report as monumental, a game-changer, a milestone. Others have claimed that it represents an "unprecedented" act of transparency by the Vatican.
But does it really?
By the clericsOh, there certainly is a massive amount of material – a lot of it ugly, embarrassing and damning – in the report's 449 pages.
And then there are the 1,410 footnotes. Yes, you read that correctly: one-thousand-four-hundred-and-ten footnotes.
They provide even more gruesome details and wonkish "facts" that will fascinate ecclesiastical voyeurs and scandalize those who are piously clueless or cluelessly pious.
But sheer volume of Church records, interviews and personal correspondence does not prove the Vatican is being transparent, certainly not completely so.
Remember that the Holy See's Secretariat of State prepared the McCarrick Report at the direction of Pope Francis.
But the genesis of this report actually goes back to August 2018 when Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a former papal nuncio to the United States, wrote a wild attack on the current pope for protecting McCarrick. He even called for Francis to resign.
A number of US bishops vouched for Viganò's integrity and credibility and, eventually, the entire national bishops' conference asked the pope to launch a Vatican investigation into the whole saga of McCarrick's career.
They demanded we get to the bottom of who knew what about him and when they knew it.
That's when the pope instructed the Secretariat of State to widen the investigation.
For the clericsYet, there is strong suspicion, and some evidence, that at least much of the McCarrick Report was written by Jeffrey Lena, a California-based attorney that has represented the Holy See in sex abuse cases for the last two decades.
Why doesn't the report come right out and say that? Ok, Lena is certainly on the Vatican's payroll and, the way things work in this organization, he'd have to be extremely loyal to the institutional Church to have this job.
But if he and his team are the ones that actually wrote the report, acknowledging such would at least show that lay people played a role in this project.
But like those rumors that dogged Teddy McCarrick all those years, we can't really say, because no one has come forth to confirm them.
The US bishops had urged the pope to entrust the investigation to a board of respected lay experts. But Francis and his aides ignored this advice. It was a mistake to do so.
But one can only suspect why – because the Vatican would not be in control of what would and would not be reported.
The McCarrick Report is long and should be studied slowly and carefully. But a first summary reading suggests that there must be something missing.
All we have are a bunch of people who kept dropping the ball and were not following up on accusations, but dismissing them as "only rumors". No one was really to blame except Teddy the amazing con artist. He fooled us all.
Except he didn't. And that fact probably leads us closer to the truth about what really happened.
He used money and his position as bishop, archbishop and – eventually cardinal – to "buy" people's silence and cull their favor.
No one would come forward and tell Church authorities what they knew. No one would sign a sworn statement.
Not the seminarians, for fear that McCarrick or his loyalists would block them from being ordained.
Not the priests – including certain seminary rectors –, out of their desire to be raised to the episcopate, which they knew McCarrick could facilitate or impede.
Not McCarrick's fellow bishops – especially his juniors –, out of a similar desire for further advancement, which McCarrick could help or hinder. And for fear of being cut off from his generous monetary donations.
And not even the popes and their aides, who found in McCarrick an important financial and (at times) diplomatic asset of the Holy See.
All clerics or future clerics.
Many of them are (or were) talented and good men who, from their first years in seminary, found themselves increasing conformed to a clerical system and mentality that works very much like an Old Boys' Network.
By the standards of the Gospel, it is a bad system. And everyone knows it's hard to be good in a bad system. And it's even harder to stand at a distance, objectively see the system's defects and uncover them with any real transparency.
That, perhaps, is the real flaw of the "McCarrick Report".
A Way Of Being
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
Wisdom is not the result of mental effort. It cannot be
gained through intellectual study. Even life experiences do not make us wise if
we don’t process them humbly and consciously. Sadly, most of us were never
taught how to do that, which is why so few older people are true elders, with
any wisdom to pass on to the next generations.
Wisdom is a way of being—a way of being whole and fully open
to a knowing beyond rational thought alone. Do not confuse this kind of knowing
as lightweight, saccharine, or ephemeral. The exact opposite is true. To see in
such a way requires the hard work of keeping all our inner spaces open—mind,
heart, and body—all at once. This is at the center of any authentic
spirituality, and it does not happen easily or without paying respectful and
non-egoic attention to the moment in front of me and within me—which I could
call prayer.
My fellow CAC faculty member and respected wisdom teacher
Cynthia Bourgeault writes of the deep interior commitment that must be made by
those who embark on this path:
A Wisdom way of knowing . . . requires the whole of one’s
being and is ultimately attained only through the yielding of one’s whole being
into the intimacy of knowing and being known. . . . It doesn’t happen apart
from complete vulnerability and self-giving. But the divine Lover is absolutely
real, and for those willing to bear the wounds of intimacy, the knowledge of
that underlying coherence—“in which all things hold together”—is both possible
and inevitable. [1]
Since the Enlightenment, Westerners have become overly
reliant on the intelligence of the mind, neglecting that of the heart and body.
But by heart, I don’t mean just feeling and emotion. Cynthia Bourgeault calls
the heart “an organ for the perception of divine purpose and beauty.” [2]
Tilden Edwards, founder of the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation,
describes the spiritual faculty of heart as “a quality of intuitive awareness .
. . a sense of inclusive, compassionate, undefended, direct in-touch-ness with
what is really there.” [3] This “undefended knowing” allows us to drop beneath
the thinking mind, to touch upon real experience, unhindered by the ego’s sense
of self, without fear or agenda.
The Wisdom lineage offers us a healthy middle place, trapped
in neither of the two alternating mediocrities of knowing: all heart and little
head (lacking rational, historical, or scientific grounding) or all head and
little heart (lacking deep personal experience, subtlety, or authentic love).
For a holistic and mature faith, we need both head and heart grounded in our
physical and sensory body.
[1] Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Way of Knowing:
Reclaiming an Ancient Tradition to Awaken the Heart (Jossey-Bass: 2003), 10.
[2] Ibid., 34.
[3] Tilden Edwards, “Undefended Knowing: A Conversation with
Richard Rohr and Tilden Edwards” (HuffPost: 2013),
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/undefended-knowing-a-conv_b_3744513.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for
Our True Self (Jossey-Bass: 2013), 70-71; and Things Hidden: Scripture as
Spirituality (Franciscan Media: 2007), 13-14.
The Law Of Gravity And The Holy Spirit
God is erotically charged and the world is achingly amorous, hence they caress each other in mutual attraction and filiation.
Jewish philosopher Martin Buber made that assertion, and while it seems to perfectly echo the opening line of St. Augustine’s autobiography (“You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”) it hints at something more. St. Augustine was talking about an insatiable ache inside the human heart which keeps us restless and forever aware that everything we experience is not enough because the finite unceasingly aches for the infinite, and the infinite unceasingly lures the finite. But St. Augustine was speaking of the human heart, about the restlessness and pull towards God that’s felt there.
Martin Buber is talking about that too, but he’s also talking about a restlessness, an incurable pull towards God, that’s inside all of nature, inside the universe itself. It isn’t just people who are achingly amorous, it’s the whole world, all of nature, the universe itself.
What’s being said here? In essence, Buber is saying that what’s felt inside the human heart is also present inside every element within nature itself, in atoms, molecules, stones, plants, insects, and animals. There’s the same ache for God inside everything that exists, from a dead planet, to a black hole, to a redwood tree, to our pet dogs and cats, to the heart of a saint. And in that there’s no distinction between the spiritual and the physical. The one God who made both is drawing them both in the same way.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who was both a scientist and a mystic, believed this interplay between the energy flowing from an erotically charged God and that flowing back from an amorous world, is the energy that undergirds the very structure of the universe, physical and spiritual. For Teilhard, the law of gravity, atomic activity, photosynthesis, ecosystems, electromagnetic fields, animal instinct, sexuality, human friendship, creativity, and altruism, all draw on and manifest one and the same energy, an energy that is forever drawing all things towards each other. If that is true, and it is, then ultimately the law of gravity and the Holy Spirit are part of one and the same energy, one and the same law, one and the same interplay of eros and response.
At first glance it may seem rather unorthodox theologically to put people and physical nature on the same plane. Perhaps too, it some might find it offensive to speak of God as “erotically charged”. So let me address those concerns.
In terms of God relating to physical nature, orthodox Christian theology and our scriptures affirm that God’s coming to us in Christ in the incarnation is an event not just for people, but also for physical creation itself. When Jesus says he has come to save the world he is, in fact, talking about the world and not just the people in the world. Physical creation, no less than humanity, is God’s child and God intends to redeem all of his children. Christian theology has never taught that the world will be destroyed at the end of time, but rather (as St. Paul says) physical creation will be transformed and enter into the glorious liberty of the children of God. How will the physical world go to heaven? We don’t know; though we can’t conceptualize how we will go there either. But we know this: the Christ who took on flesh in the incarnation is also the Cosmic Christ, that is, the Christ through whom all things were made and who binds all creation together. Hence theologians speak of “deep incarnation”, namely, of the Christ-event as going deeper than simply saving human beings, as saving physical creation itself.
I can appreciate too that there will be some dis-ease in my speaking of God as “erotic”, given that today we generally identify that word with sex. But that’s not the meaning of the word. For the Greek philosophers, from whom we took this word, eros was identified with love, and with love in all its aspects. Eros did mean sexual attraction and emotional obsession, but it also meant friendship, playfulness, creativity, common sense, and altruism. Eros, properly understood, includes all of those elements, so even if we identify eros with sexuality, there still should be no discomfort in applying this to God. We are made in the image and likeness of God, and thus our sexuality reflects something inside the nature of God. A God who is generative enough to create billions of galaxies and is continually creating billions of people, clearly is sexual and fertile in ways beyond our conception. Moreover, the relentless ache inside of every element and person in the universe for unity with something beyond itself has one and the same thing in mind, consummation in love with God who is Love.
So, in reality, the law of gravity and the gifts of the Holy Spirit have one and the same aim.
United In Vision
This article is taken from the weekly Blog of Fr Michael White, Pastor of the Church of the Nativity, Timoneum, Baltimore. You can read his blog here
This year’s election has felt increasingly like a contest not so much of two politicians or parties but of competing visions for the future of the country. In each case, the other side is represented as an existential threat, a radical departure from life as we know it, and a sure step towards a bleak future. With such high stakes, it seems like everyone has become involved in the debate, and the debate is fierce, fraught with conflict, and admitting no compromise or middle ground. I can honestly say, there are friends and family I am currently avoiding because any conversation with them will most certainly be unpleasant and leave me feeling uncomfortable.
What if there was another approach to politics? Not to diminish its importance in our lives but to recognize that there is a greater order than government policy and practice. What if we could be clear that while politics and politicians can have a powerful effect on our communities, our economy, the culture and environment in which we live our lives, they cannot control our emotions, thoughts, or interior life…unless we let them.
Scripture proposes such a vision in the Book of Revelation:After this I had a vision of a great multitude,which no one could count, from every nation, race, people and tongue.They stood before the throne and the Lamb,wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands. Revelation 7:9
In this passage, the whole human race is united in worship of God. This is God’s plan and purpose. This is God’s vision.
But think about when John the apostle wrote this. He wrote it at a time when there were not that many Christians. They were seen by much of the world as simply a fringe sect of Judaism, followers of an itinerant preacher from a backwater town nobody ever heard of. John’s vision was unlikely, to say the least. But it showed an incredible vision for the future then; an incredible confidence in the Gospel.
They cried out in a loud voice:Salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne,and from the lamb. Revelation 7:10
They stand before God because they realize God has restored them. Salvation means that God has restored them to his original intention. Salvation means they recognize that through God’s power they have become who they were created to be.
Our vision as a church is to serve in this vision God gave John 2,000 years ago. Our vision is to raise a movement of people who serve God and his purposes in our generation among the unchurched in our own community while helping other churches to do the same elsewhere.
A vision of changing the culture of Catholic parishes by changing consumers into disciples, active students, friends and followers of the Lord. We are united behind that vision. And it is that vision, not politics or political contests that should form and guide our interior life.
A Time Of Choosing:Conversion And Discernment In The Mind Of Pope Francis
Writing for The Way, Tim McEvoy explains why the idea of Pope Francis as the Church’s spiritual director is one to which he is particularly drawn. He uses Christus vivit, Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation addressed ‘to young people and to the entire people of God’, to explore what conversion and discernment mean in the mind of Francis and, in particular, how they relate to one another.Tim McEvoy holds a doctorate in early modern history from the University of Warwick and is a spiritual director at St Beuno’s Jesuit Spirituality Centre in north Wales.This article is taken from the ThinkingFaith.org website where you can find a wide range of articles by clicking here
In his extraordinary decision to speak ‘to the city and to the world’ from St Peter’s Square at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, Pope Francis pointed his listeners and viewers to an urgent call to conversion:You are calling on us to seize this time of trial as a time of choosing. It is not the time of your judgement, but of our judgement: a time to choose what matters and what passes away, a time to separate what is necessary from what is not. It is a time to get our lives back on track with regard to you, Lord, and to others.[1]
The image of Francis standing, frail and exposed, amid the dreary March rain and ambulance sirens of Rome in lockdown, is one that will stay with me for a very long time, and seemed to exemplify the closeness of this remarkable Pope to his people. At the darkest of times, he showed how the Church must stand, not aloof but in solidarity with others, holding out the hope of encountering grace and the Lord even from the cross of coronavirus. His papacy has been a model of that pastoral conversion ‘to show and live the way of mercy’ to which the Church has been called: drawing close to the people of God in the messy reality of their lives and getting his shoes dirty with the mud of the streets.[2]
Austen Ivereigh is quite right to compare Francis’s style of governance, revealed in a unique way during the pandemic, to that of a spiritual director accompanying the Church and helping it to navigate through the complex global crisis of our times in all its manifestations.[3] Key to this navigation has been his astute discernment of spirits and his uncanny ability to point out the false consolations and temptations of the bad spirit. Discernment has not only been an important pastoral and formational need identified by Francis for the Church but it has shaped the processes of his pontificate, and indeed his life, in definitive ways, as many commentators have noted.[4] A synodal, journeying Church with Christ at its centre must be discerning at every level, individual and institutional, if it is not to get lost along the way, and is in need of continual reorientation and recentring.
For Francis, the themes of conversion and discernment appear to be inextricably linked, and I would like briefly to explore something of this overlapping relationship in his thought, particularly as it appears in his latest apostolic exhortation, Christus vivit, and to trace its roots back to his grounding in the Ignatian tradition of spiritual discernment. The word ‘roots’ has significance for Pope Francis in terms of how he views the world and the interconnected crises it currently faces, as has already been noted.[5] In an era of ‘liquid capitalism’, characterized by an ever more rapid pace of change and the loosening of traditional social, economic and political bonds, the image of roots conjures up neither artificial stability nor stubborn resistance to change but continued access to a deeper source of life and support.
Francis the spiritual director reminds us that, just as for the individual making a retreat and reviewing his or her ‘faith history’, the roots of a mature society and its ability to grow in a healthy direction lie in its collective ability to remember, to know and to judge past events – its ‘historical memory’.[6] Memory plays a crucial role in discernment for Francis, as it did for Ignatius. To be wise and discerning involves, in some sense, being ‘memory keepers’, as he puts it.[7]
It is interesting to note how Francis also uses the metaphor of roots in a discerning sense in reference to the COVID-19 pandemic and its graced opportunity for conversion. In his prophetic urbi et orbi he points out how the ‘tempest’ of the virus has exposed our vital need to be put ‘in touch with our roots’ and with all those things that truly ‘nourish, sustain and strengthen our lives and our communities’, recognising and reintegrating the wisdom and memory of our elders and the vital work of those who are often unappreciated and hidden from view: cleaners, nurses, caregivers. These life-giving roots are also the ‘antibodies we need to confront adversity’, as opposed to all that is false and superficial in our daily lives. Francis’s Lenten call to the Church to return wholeheartedly to God consists of making a comprehensive and compassionate review of our shared reality and choosing between what nourishes and what fails to nourish the soul.[8]
The twin threads of conversion and discernment, encountered throughout Francis’s official writings, are expressed at some depth in the latest post-synodal apostolic exhortation, Christus vivit, addressed ‘to young people and to the entire People of God’. After Amoris laetitia – also the product of long processes of communal discernment – it is, significantly, the document in which the words ‘discern’ and ‘discernment’ appear most frequently in his writings to date, with 34 mentions in 74 pages and a dedicated chapter on the vocational discernment of young people.[9] In it we get a real sense of what both conversion and discernment mean in the mind of Francis and, in particular, how they relate to one another.
Conversion, for the Church, says Francis, can be summarised as ‘renewal and a return to youth’. This is not youth in the false sense of a culture obsessed with youthful beauty or novelty, but the true youthfulness, life and energy that spring from openness to the ever-new Risen Jesus. It is an ongoing process of transformation that involves holding in creative tension the best of what is old, the Church’s life-nourishing roots, with an openness to embrace what is new in Christ. It means a constant readiness to respond to grace, to let go of what does not nourish and start again, returning to its ‘first love’: the source of the Church’s youthfulness and unique identity. Christ’s call to conversion, both to the Church as a body and to each individual member, is essentially the same. As Francis says, reaching out to each young person right at the start of his exhortation, the bottom line is that, ‘Christ is alive and he wants you to be alive!’[10]
Conversion in this sense is not a discrete event but rather a continual call to renewal and remaining ever alive in Christ. Francis expresses it using another image later in the document as learning to live fully and fruitfully in ‘the now of God’.[11] Living fully means being fully present to the grace and mercy of God in each moment and each situation, no matter how dark or difficult. We need to let ourselves be ‘saved over and over again’, says Francis, and to return, time and time again, to the God who ‘always embraces us after every fall, helping us to rise and get back on our feet’.[12]
Much could be said about what Francis, in so many ways ‘the discerning Pope’, has to say about spiritual discernment: that means of distinguishing between grace and temptation, as he likes to call it.[13] Fundamentally, he has sought to demystify and declericalise what has sometimes been seen as an abstruse art reserved for the spiritual elite (or copyrighted by Jesuits), regrounding the Church in its own tradition, and the ordinary people of God in their own daily experience, of discernment. Discernment is not a spiritual technique or tool for Francis, but something much deeper and broader. It has to do with the sensus fidei – a spiritual sense beyond mere reason or wisdom, gifted by the Holy Spirit to the faithful, intrinsic to discipleship for all and part of a wider ‘formation of conscience’.[14]
Ultimately discernment is somehow both the seed and the fruit of an ongoing relationship of freedom, trust and receptivity to the Holy Spirit: ‘the graced practice of letting go and letting God lead us’, as Nick Austin has put it so well.[15] It is a gift and a lifelong process of transformation by grace as we learn to become like the one we contemplate and ‘cultivate the very sentiments of Jesus Christ’.[16]
In Christus vivit we see a glimpse of how Francis perceives discernment in action in relation to the accompaniment of young people, which draws telling inspiration from his own Ignatian roots. Using the Emmaus story in Luke’s Gospel as a model for ministry, he points to how Jesus walks with his disciples, accompanying them along the way even while they head in the wrong direction:
He asks them questions and listens patiently to their version of events, and in this way he helps them recognize what they were experiencing. Then, with affection and power, he proclaims the word to them, leading them to interpret the events they had experienced in the light of the Scriptures …. They themselves choose to resume their journey at once in the opposite direction, to return to the community and to share the experience of their encounter with the risen Lord.[17]
This threefold movement of recognising experience, interpreting it in the light of scripture and choosing to respond to grace (rather than temptation), while reflecting the classic ‘See, Judge, Act’ cycle of Cardinal Cardijn, is grounded firmly in the Ignatian tradition of spiritual discernment.
The same dynamic can be observed in Ignatius’ title or preface to the Rules for Discernment of Spirits:Rules to aid us towards perceiving and then understanding, at least to some extent, the various motions which are caused in the soul: the good motions that they may be received, and the bad that they may be rejected (Exx 313).
For Ignatius, discernment involves a similar threefold process: of perceiving – or recognising – the various threads of one’s experience as they are remembered and brought into consciousness; understanding – or interpreting – these in the light of the gospel, the Church’s tradition and previous experience; and finally choosing to respond to what seems to come from God and rejecting everything else as distraction or temptation. Choice and action are at the heart of the process: the essential task of discernment being to receive the motions of the good spirit and to reject those of the bad, as Rob Marsh says.[18] With his characteristic and uncompromising clarity, Ignatius boils it down in the end to a stark choice between good and bad: between what leads to life – the place of encounter with the living God – and what leads to a dead end.
There is more than a touch of this Ignatian starkness in Pope Francis’s vision of the world, in which discernment is ‘a genuine means of spiritual combat, helping us to follow the Lord more faithfully’. In order to fulfil its mission, the Church must help others to recognise and interpret their experience, and to choose well in response: to learn, in other words, to tell apart the ‘promptings of the good Spirit’ from the ‘traps laid by the evil spirit – his empty works and promises’.[19]
It finally comes down to a Moses-like choice of life over death, led and informed by the Spirit. At both the macro- and micro-levels, the ecclesial and the personal, discernment, for Francis, is essentially a God-given ‘time of choosing’ between ‘what matters and what passes away’; between what helps us get back on track and stay there with regard to God, and all that derails or diverts us.[20] In returning to where we began, it appears not only that Francis perceives an urgent need for conversion to discernment in the Church but that he sees discernment as conversion: a moment-by-moment conversion to Christ and the life-leadings of the Spirit.
Intrinsic to discernment, whether at the individual or institutional level, is an ongoing surrender of our limited ‘plans, certainties and agendas’ to God and a willingness to be led into a new and larger horizon of life.[21] Discernment and conversion converge, it seems, in Francis’s vision for a Christ-centred, Christ-contemplating Church: a Church that is called, and calls others, again and again, to turn back to God, confident in God’s mercy, and to choose life ‘so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days’ (Deuteronomy 30:19–20).
This article was published in The Way, 59/4 (October 2020). To find out more about and subscribe to The Way, please visit theway.org.uk [1] Pope Francis’, urbi et orbi, ‘Extraordinary Moment of Prayer Presided over by Pope Francis’, 27 March 2020.[2] Pope Francis, Misericordiae vultus, §10.[3] Austen Ivereigh, Wounded Shepherd: Pope Francis and His Struggle to Convert the Catholic Church (New York: Henry Holt, 2019); Austen Ivereigh, ‘Remembering Our Future: Pope Francis and the Corona Crisis’, Thinking Faith (8 April 2020), at https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/remembering-our-future-pope-francis-and-corona-crisis, accessed 17 July 2020.[4] See Nicholas Austin, ‘Francis: The Discerning Pope’, Thinking Faith (9 March 2018), at https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/francis-discerning-pope, accessed 15 July 2020.[5] Ivereigh, ‘Remembering Our Future’.[6] Pope Francis, Amoris laetitia, §193.[7] Pope Francis, Christus vivit, §196.[8] Pope Francis, urbi et orbi, 27 March 2020.[9] Amoris laetitia has 46 references in a whopping 364 pages.[10] Christus vivit, §§34, 50, 1.[11] This is used as the heading for chapter three in the document. See also Christus vivit, §178.[12] Christus vivit, §§123, 120.[13] Austin, ‘Francis: The Discerning Pope’; for example, Christus vivit, §293.[14] Compare Evangelii gaudium, n.119; and also Christus vivit, §281.[15] Austin, ‘Francis: The Discerning Pope’.[16] Christus vivit, §281.[17] Christus vivit, §237, quoting ‘Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment: Final Document’ (27 October 2018), §4.[18] Rob Marsh, ‘Imagining Ignatian Spiritual Direction’, The Way, 48/3 (July 2009), 38.[19] Christus vivit, §§295, 293.[20] Pope Francis, urbi et orbi blessing, 27 March 2020.[21] Austin, ‘Francis: The Discerning Pope’.
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 16th Nov NO MASS ... St Margaret, St Gertrude
Tues 17th Nov Devonport 9:30am … St Elizabeth of Hungary
Wed 18th Nov Ulverstone 9:30am ...
Thurs 19th Nov Devonport 8.30am ... pre-recording of Sunday Mass
Devonport 12noon … St Josaphat
Fri 20th Nov Ulverstone 9:30am
Sat 21st Nov Devonport 6.00pm
Ulverstone 6:00pm
Sun 22nd 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 Bryan, Judy Redgrove, Kath Pearce, Edite McHugh, Jill Cotterill, Deb Edwards & …
Let us pray for those who have died recently:
Paul Dilger, Peter Magill, Oscar van Leent, Stan Laffer, Dolly Eaves
Let us pray for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 11th – 17th November, 2020
Finbarr Kennedy, Ron Garnsey, James William Monaghan, James McLagan, Margaret Kenney, Catherine Fraser, James Malcolm Monaghan, Olive Purton, Terrence Smith, Freda Morgan, Joe Stolp, Margaret Clarke, Terry Matthews, Denis McCormack
May the souls of the faithful departed,
through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen
PREGO REFLECTION ON TODAY’S GOSPEL
After coming to some inner quiet in the way that works best for me, I read the shortened version of this well-known parable several times.
I may want to read the full version in my missal or bible at a later time.
What strikes me as I read the text? Perhaps there’s a phrase I haven’t ‘heard’ before?
I stay with it for a few moments.
I may want to consider my own ‘talents’.
I notice that everyone has been given at least one talent.
Can I name mine?
What have I done with my talents? …
What do I do with them? ...
What will I do?
In what ways have others been affected as I use them?
I ponder, and tell the Lord how I feel.
I listen to the Lord calling me his good and faithful servant, giving me his trust, and inviting me to share in his happiness.
How do I want to respond?
With gratitude, disbelief, yearning …?
In time, I slowly conclude my prayer: Glory be to the Father....
Weekly Ramblings
Only a few weeks to go and we will start our advent journey, a joyful period of time in which we are able to prepare ourselves for the birth of Christ. A moment of such tremendous importance it is still celebrated over 2000 years later.
But what should we do with the last couple of weeks before Advent? As the year is slowly drawing to a close, I doubt there are many who will miss the year 2020, (maybe the odd Richmond Tigers supporter).
It was Socrates, an early Greek philosopher who said, “The unexamined life is not worth living”. As we get closer to the start of Advent, we are invited to look back over the year that was and to reflect on what has been, not the big world shattering events, but the little moments in our lives. Those moments where we truly were the Disciples of Christ, we are called to be. As well as those moments when we might not have lived up to the title of disciple. We do this not to be negative but to truly live our lives to the full.
As mentioned, we will soon make our first steps on our journey of Advent and would encourage everyone to make this a time of prayer, a path walked with God. To help with this, last week we received copies of the daily Advent-Christmastide Reflection booklet – ADORE – produced by the Diocese of Wollongong. The book was available over the weekend and cost $3 a copy. And we were delighted to see many people take the opportunity to grab a copy after Mass, but sadly it means we have very few copies left. If you would like a copy, please let us know and we will endeavour to supply one. But supply is limited, so don’t tarry.
Fr Mike commends this book as an excellent resource for prayer and reflection during this season of the Church’s year.
From all at the Parish Office, we wish you a safe and blessed week, God Bless!!
Fr Steven
During the week, Australia celebrated the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. NAIDOC is celebrated not only in Indigenous communities, but by Australians from all walks of life. The theme for this year is 'Always was, always will be.' This theme has been developed to shine a focus on the length of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander occupation of Australia.
We encourage you to find ways to appreciate the wealth and breadth of Indigenous Nations, languages and knowledges of this continent.
Mersey Leven Parish would like to congratulate Gilbert & Shirley Evans on their 60th Wedding Anniversary, Thursday 19th November, 2020.
Love is patient,
Love is kind,
Love rejoices in the truth,
Love never ends.
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.
Phone Mary Owen 0429 354 406
2021 COLUMBAN ART CALENDARS
The Calendars available from the Piety Shop at OLOL Church Devonport and Sacred Heart Church Ulverstone. Cost $10.00 each.
CHRISTMAS CARDS
Cards are available from the Piety Shop at Our Lady of Lourdes Church Devonport.
BECOMING MOTIVATED DISCIPLES
This Advent the Verbum Domini Institute is focusing on how to live out the Gospel more fully through motivated Christian Discipleship. Join this four week short course to hear and discuss the meaning of Christian discipleship with the aim of developing a renewed commitment to Jesus Christ in preparation for his birth at Christmas.
When: Tuesdays 24th Nov., 1st, 8th & 15th Dec. Time: 10.30am-12pm. Cost: Free.
Register: christine.wood@aohtas.org.au or call 03-6208-6236. Where: online via Zoom.
CONCERNED CATHOLICS TASMANIA INC (CCT) INVITATION
“Sharing the Journey: Co-Responsibility in Our Church.”
CCT invites you to a regional gathering focussing on the report “The Light from the Southern Cross – Promoting Co-Responsible Governance in the Catholic Church in Australia”. This was commissioned by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and Religious Superiors, as recommended in the final report by the Royal Commission. Key aspects of that report will be discussed, with some recorded input from Australian theologian Father Richard Lennan – one of the four international consultants who drew up the final version. Find out more and have your say Saturday 5th December - 10am to 12noon at Star of the Sea Hall, Mount St Burnie. Register at sue.hyslop@icloud.com
VIRTUAL WAY TO ST JAMES PILGRIMAGE
Make your way through natural surroundings in a meditative way anywhere in the world on 9th – 10th January 2021.
Join this Global “El Camino de Santiago” in the Spirit of the Annual Pilgrimage to St James Church in Cygnet in the Huon Valley.
Facebook link: https://www.facebook.com/waytostjamescygnet/
Website link: https://www.waytostjames.com.au/
Thursday 19th November. Eyes down 7:30pm.
Covid safe procedures will be followed.
Letter From Rome
Profiles In Clericalism
The real flaw of the McCarrick Report
- Robert Mickens, Rome, November 14, 2020.
This article is from the La-Croix International website - you can access the site here but complete full access is via paid subscription
In the end, it was just about what was to be expected.
The exceedingly long and long awaited report on the history of Theodore McCarrick's rise to the penultimate rung of the Catholic hierarchy is now out.
And it's being interpreted in almost as many ways as the number of men who are currently members of the College of Cardinals, that exclusive club from which McCarrick was eventually expelled for sexual abusing at least one underage boy.
But, in fact, the so-called "McCarrick Report" has revealed very little that many people inside the Church did not already know or suspect.
Up until two years ago when the Archdiocese of New York finally determined that the former cardinal had abused a minor in the 1970s, there were longstanding rumors about McCarrick's habit of sleeping with adult seminarians.
But in the newly released report, the Vatican wrings its hands, regretting that for all these years it was simply the case that no one could actually verify that Uncle Ted was sharing his bed with these young candidates for the priesthood whom he called his "nephews".
Of the clerics
Countless priests, bishops and cardinals even claimed that, gosh, they'd never even heard about any of that.
Those that had heard about it, including a few popes, simply didn't want to believe that such talk was anything more than just petty gossip. Or they rationalized it by claiming that, well, at least the seminarians were adults. McCarrick wasn't diddling kids.
Negligence, gullibility, willful blindness, refusal to listen to accusations, attempts to discredit accusers, and lies of various magnitudes.
These are part of the potpourri of excuses the McCarrick Report furnishes, sometimes in numbing detail, to explain how a classic Church careerist climbed the ecclesiastical ladder to become the Cardinal Archbishop of Washington.
But nothing was more determinative to Uncle Ted's rise in the clerical Church, the report assures us, than his own skills of deception.
My Lord, he was even able to dupe John Paul II. He actually was able to pull the wool over the sagacious eyes of John Paul the Great!
As for poor Benedict XVI, after he had pretty solid proof that McCarrick was sleeping with seminarians, he opted for the discreet and merciful measures of quietly retiring the cardinal and instructing (though never forcing) him to keep a low profile.
Then came Pope Francis. He didn't seem to be too concerned about what the ageing American was up to and figured he'd just let things be as his Bavarian predecessor had left them.
And then, finally, a witness came forward with the pedophilia claim.
The wheels of Church justice went into overdrive and, within a little over a year, Francis removed McCarrick from the College of Cardinals and then from the priesthood.
When there was rock solid proof, the pope immediately took decisive action.
This is the narrative the authors of the report are trying to sell us. And, it seems, there are a lot of people who are buying it.
Some have hailed the McCarrick Report as monumental, a game-changer, a milestone. Others have claimed that it represents an "unprecedented" act of transparency by the Vatican.
But does it really?
By the clerics
Oh, there certainly is a massive amount of material – a lot of it ugly, embarrassing and damning – in the report's 449 pages.
And then there are the 1,410 footnotes. Yes, you read that correctly: one-thousand-four-hundred-and-ten footnotes.
They provide even more gruesome details and wonkish "facts" that will fascinate ecclesiastical voyeurs and scandalize those who are piously clueless or cluelessly pious.
But sheer volume of Church records, interviews and personal correspondence does not prove the Vatican is being transparent, certainly not completely so.
Remember that the Holy See's Secretariat of State prepared the McCarrick Report at the direction of Pope Francis.
But the genesis of this report actually goes back to August 2018 when Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a former papal nuncio to the United States, wrote a wild attack on the current pope for protecting McCarrick. He even called for Francis to resign.
A number of US bishops vouched for Viganò's integrity and credibility and, eventually, the entire national bishops' conference asked the pope to launch a Vatican investigation into the whole saga of McCarrick's career.
They demanded we get to the bottom of who knew what about him and when they knew it.
That's when the pope instructed the Secretariat of State to widen the investigation.
For the clerics
Yet, there is strong suspicion, and some evidence, that at least much of the McCarrick Report was written by Jeffrey Lena, a California-based attorney that has represented the Holy See in sex abuse cases for the last two decades.
Why doesn't the report come right out and say that? Ok, Lena is certainly on the Vatican's payroll and, the way things work in this organization, he'd have to be extremely loyal to the institutional Church to have this job.
But if he and his team are the ones that actually wrote the report, acknowledging such would at least show that lay people played a role in this project.
But like those rumors that dogged Teddy McCarrick all those years, we can't really say, because no one has come forth to confirm them.
The US bishops had urged the pope to entrust the investigation to a board of respected lay experts. But Francis and his aides ignored this advice. It was a mistake to do so.
But one can only suspect why – because the Vatican would not be in control of what would and would not be reported.
The McCarrick Report is long and should be studied slowly and carefully. But a first summary reading suggests that there must be something missing.
All we have are a bunch of people who kept dropping the ball and were not following up on accusations, but dismissing them as "only rumors". No one was really to blame except Teddy the amazing con artist. He fooled us all.
Except he didn't. And that fact probably leads us closer to the truth about what really happened.
He used money and his position as bishop, archbishop and – eventually cardinal – to "buy" people's silence and cull their favor.
No one would come forward and tell Church authorities what they knew. No one would sign a sworn statement.
Not the seminarians, for fear that McCarrick or his loyalists would block them from being ordained.
Not the priests – including certain seminary rectors –, out of their desire to be raised to the episcopate, which they knew McCarrick could facilitate or impede.
Not McCarrick's fellow bishops – especially his juniors –, out of a similar desire for further advancement, which McCarrick could help or hinder. And for fear of being cut off from his generous monetary donations.
And not even the popes and their aides, who found in McCarrick an important financial and (at times) diplomatic asset of the Holy See.
All clerics or future clerics.
Many of them are (or were) talented and good men who, from their first years in seminary, found themselves increasing conformed to a clerical system and mentality that works very much like an Old Boys' Network.
By the standards of the Gospel, it is a bad system. And everyone knows it's hard to be good in a bad system. And it's even harder to stand at a distance, objectively see the system's defects and uncover them with any real transparency.
That, perhaps, is the real flaw of the "McCarrick Report".
A Way Of Being
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
Wisdom is not the result of mental effort. It cannot be
gained through intellectual study. Even life experiences do not make us wise if
we don’t process them humbly and consciously. Sadly, most of us were never
taught how to do that, which is why so few older people are true elders, with
any wisdom to pass on to the next generations.
Wisdom is a way of being—a way of being whole and fully open
to a knowing beyond rational thought alone. Do not confuse this kind of knowing
as lightweight, saccharine, or ephemeral. The exact opposite is true. To see in
such a way requires the hard work of keeping all our inner spaces open—mind,
heart, and body—all at once. This is at the center of any authentic
spirituality, and it does not happen easily or without paying respectful and
non-egoic attention to the moment in front of me and within me—which I could
call prayer.
My fellow CAC faculty member and respected wisdom teacher
Cynthia Bourgeault writes of the deep interior commitment that must be made by
those who embark on this path:
A Wisdom way of knowing . . . requires the whole of one’s
being and is ultimately attained only through the yielding of one’s whole being
into the intimacy of knowing and being known. . . . It doesn’t happen apart
from complete vulnerability and self-giving. But the divine Lover is absolutely
real, and for those willing to bear the wounds of intimacy, the knowledge of
that underlying coherence—“in which all things hold together”—is both possible
and inevitable. [1]
Since the Enlightenment, Westerners have become overly
reliant on the intelligence of the mind, neglecting that of the heart and body.
But by heart, I don’t mean just feeling and emotion. Cynthia Bourgeault calls
the heart “an organ for the perception of divine purpose and beauty.” [2]
Tilden Edwards, founder of the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation,
describes the spiritual faculty of heart as “a quality of intuitive awareness .
. . a sense of inclusive, compassionate, undefended, direct in-touch-ness with
what is really there.” [3] This “undefended knowing” allows us to drop beneath
the thinking mind, to touch upon real experience, unhindered by the ego’s sense
of self, without fear or agenda.
The Wisdom lineage offers us a healthy middle place, trapped
in neither of the two alternating mediocrities of knowing: all heart and little
head (lacking rational, historical, or scientific grounding) or all head and
little heart (lacking deep personal experience, subtlety, or authentic love).
For a holistic and mature faith, we need both head and heart grounded in our
physical and sensory body.
[1] Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Way of Knowing: Reclaiming an Ancient Tradition to Awaken the Heart (Jossey-Bass: 2003), 10.
[2] Ibid., 34.
[3] Tilden Edwards, “Undefended Knowing: A Conversation with
Richard Rohr and Tilden Edwards” (HuffPost: 2013),
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/undefended-knowing-a-conv_b_3744513.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self (Jossey-Bass: 2013), 70-71; and Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality (Franciscan Media: 2007), 13-14.
The Law Of Gravity And The Holy Spirit
God is erotically charged and the world is achingly amorous, hence they caress each other in mutual attraction and filiation.
Jewish philosopher Martin Buber made that assertion, and while it seems to perfectly echo the opening line of St. Augustine’s autobiography (“You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”) it hints at something more. St. Augustine was talking about an insatiable ache inside the human heart which keeps us restless and forever aware that everything we experience is not enough because the finite unceasingly aches for the infinite, and the infinite unceasingly lures the finite. But St. Augustine was speaking of the human heart, about the restlessness and pull towards God that’s felt there.
Martin Buber is talking about that too, but he’s also talking about a restlessness, an incurable pull towards God, that’s inside all of nature, inside the universe itself. It isn’t just people who are achingly amorous, it’s the whole world, all of nature, the universe itself.
What’s being said here? In essence, Buber is saying that what’s felt inside the human heart is also present inside every element within nature itself, in atoms, molecules, stones, plants, insects, and animals. There’s the same ache for God inside everything that exists, from a dead planet, to a black hole, to a redwood tree, to our pet dogs and cats, to the heart of a saint. And in that there’s no distinction between the spiritual and the physical. The one God who made both is drawing them both in the same way.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who was both a scientist and a mystic, believed this interplay between the energy flowing from an erotically charged God and that flowing back from an amorous world, is the energy that undergirds the very structure of the universe, physical and spiritual. For Teilhard, the law of gravity, atomic activity, photosynthesis, ecosystems, electromagnetic fields, animal instinct, sexuality, human friendship, creativity, and altruism, all draw on and manifest one and the same energy, an energy that is forever drawing all things towards each other. If that is true, and it is, then ultimately the law of gravity and the Holy Spirit are part of one and the same energy, one and the same law, one and the same interplay of eros and response.
At first glance it may seem rather unorthodox theologically to put people and physical nature on the same plane. Perhaps too, it some might find it offensive to speak of God as “erotically charged”. So let me address those concerns.
In terms of God relating to physical nature, orthodox Christian theology and our scriptures affirm that God’s coming to us in Christ in the incarnation is an event not just for people, but also for physical creation itself. When Jesus says he has come to save the world he is, in fact, talking about the world and not just the people in the world. Physical creation, no less than humanity, is God’s child and God intends to redeem all of his children. Christian theology has never taught that the world will be destroyed at the end of time, but rather (as St. Paul says) physical creation will be transformed and enter into the glorious liberty of the children of God. How will the physical world go to heaven? We don’t know; though we can’t conceptualize how we will go there either. But we know this: the Christ who took on flesh in the incarnation is also the Cosmic Christ, that is, the Christ through whom all things were made and who binds all creation together. Hence theologians speak of “deep incarnation”, namely, of the Christ-event as going deeper than simply saving human beings, as saving physical creation itself.
I can appreciate too that there will be some dis-ease in my speaking of God as “erotic”, given that today we generally identify that word with sex. But that’s not the meaning of the word. For the Greek philosophers, from whom we took this word, eros was identified with love, and with love in all its aspects. Eros did mean sexual attraction and emotional obsession, but it also meant friendship, playfulness, creativity, common sense, and altruism. Eros, properly understood, includes all of those elements, so even if we identify eros with sexuality, there still should be no discomfort in applying this to God. We are made in the image and likeness of God, and thus our sexuality reflects something inside the nature of God. A God who is generative enough to create billions of galaxies and is continually creating billions of people, clearly is sexual and fertile in ways beyond our conception. Moreover, the relentless ache inside of every element and person in the universe for unity with something beyond itself has one and the same thing in mind, consummation in love with God who is Love.
So, in reality, the law of gravity and the gifts of the Holy Spirit have one and the same aim.
United In Vision
This article is taken from the weekly Blog of Fr Michael White, Pastor of the Church of the Nativity, Timoneum, Baltimore. You can read his blog here
This year’s election has felt increasingly like a contest not so much of two politicians or parties but of competing visions for the future of the country. In each case, the other side is represented as an existential threat, a radical departure from life as we know it, and a sure step towards a bleak future. With such high stakes, it seems like everyone has become involved in the debate, and the debate is fierce, fraught with conflict, and admitting no compromise or middle ground. I can honestly say, there are friends and family I am currently avoiding because any conversation with them will most certainly be unpleasant and leave me feeling uncomfortable.
What if there was another approach to politics? Not to diminish its importance in our lives but to recognize that there is a greater order than government policy and practice. What if we could be clear that while politics and politicians can have a powerful effect on our communities, our economy, the culture and environment in which we live our lives, they cannot control our emotions, thoughts, or interior life…unless we let them.
Scripture proposes such a vision in the Book of Revelation:
After this I had a vision of a great multitude,
which no one could count, from every nation, race, people and tongue.
They stood before the throne and the Lamb,
wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands. Revelation 7:9
In this passage, the whole human race is united in worship of God. This is God’s plan and purpose. This is God’s vision.
But think about when John the apostle wrote this. He wrote it at a time when there were not that many Christians. They were seen by much of the world as simply a fringe sect of Judaism, followers of an itinerant preacher from a backwater town nobody ever heard of. John’s vision was unlikely, to say the least. But it showed an incredible vision for the future then; an incredible confidence in the Gospel.
They cried out in a loud voice:
Salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne,
and from the lamb. Revelation 7:10
They stand before God because they realize God has restored them. Salvation means that God has restored them to his original intention. Salvation means they recognize that through God’s power they have become who they were created to be.
Our vision as a church is to serve in this vision God gave John 2,000 years ago. Our vision is to raise a movement of people who serve God and his purposes in our generation among the unchurched in our own community while helping other churches to do the same elsewhere.
A vision of changing the culture of Catholic parishes by changing consumers into disciples, active students, friends and followers of the Lord. We are united behind that vision. And it is that vision, not politics or political contests that should form and guide our interior life.
A Time Of Choosing:
Conversion And Discernment In The Mind Of Pope Francis
Writing for The Way, Tim McEvoy explains why the idea of Pope Francis as the Church’s spiritual director is one to which he is particularly drawn. He uses Christus vivit, Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation addressed ‘to young people and to the entire people of God’, to explore what conversion and discernment mean in the mind of Francis and, in particular, how they relate to one another.
Tim McEvoy holds a doctorate in early modern history from the University of Warwick and is a spiritual director at St Beuno’s Jesuit Spirituality Centre in north Wales.
This article is taken from the ThinkingFaith.org website where you can find a wide range of articles by clicking here
In his extraordinary decision to speak ‘to the city and to the world’ from St Peter’s Square at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, Pope Francis pointed his listeners and viewers to an urgent call to conversion:
You are calling on us to seize this time of trial as a time of choosing. It is not the time of your judgement, but of our judgement: a time to choose what matters and what passes away, a time to separate what is necessary from what is not. It is a time to get our lives back on track with regard to you, Lord, and to others.[1]
The image of Francis standing, frail and exposed, amid the dreary March rain and ambulance sirens of Rome in lockdown, is one that will stay with me for a very long time, and seemed to exemplify the closeness of this remarkable Pope to his people. At the darkest of times, he showed how the Church must stand, not aloof but in solidarity with others, holding out the hope of encountering grace and the Lord even from the cross of coronavirus. His papacy has been a model of that pastoral conversion ‘to show and live the way of mercy’ to which the Church has been called: drawing close to the people of God in the messy reality of their lives and getting his shoes dirty with the mud of the streets.[2]
Austen Ivereigh is quite right to compare Francis’s style of governance, revealed in a unique way during the pandemic, to that of a spiritual director accompanying the Church and helping it to navigate through the complex global crisis of our times in all its manifestations.[3] Key to this navigation has been his astute discernment of spirits and his uncanny ability to point out the false consolations and temptations of the bad spirit. Discernment has not only been an important pastoral and formational need identified by Francis for the Church but it has shaped the processes of his pontificate, and indeed his life, in definitive ways, as many commentators have noted.[4] A synodal, journeying Church with Christ at its centre must be discerning at every level, individual and institutional, if it is not to get lost along the way, and is in need of continual reorientation and recentring.
For Francis, the themes of conversion and discernment appear to be inextricably linked, and I would like briefly to explore something of this overlapping relationship in his thought, particularly as it appears in his latest apostolic exhortation, Christus vivit, and to trace its roots back to his grounding in the Ignatian tradition of spiritual discernment. The word ‘roots’ has significance for Pope Francis in terms of how he views the world and the interconnected crises it currently faces, as has already been noted.[5] In an era of ‘liquid capitalism’, characterized by an ever more rapid pace of change and the loosening of traditional social, economic and political bonds, the image of roots conjures up neither artificial stability nor stubborn resistance to change but continued access to a deeper source of life and support.
Francis the spiritual director reminds us that, just as for the individual making a retreat and reviewing his or her ‘faith history’, the roots of a mature society and its ability to grow in a healthy direction lie in its collective ability to remember, to know and to judge past events – its ‘historical memory’.[6] Memory plays a crucial role in discernment for Francis, as it did for Ignatius. To be wise and discerning involves, in some sense, being ‘memory keepers’, as he puts it.[7]
It is interesting to note how Francis also uses the metaphor of roots in a discerning sense in reference to the COVID-19 pandemic and its graced opportunity for conversion. In his prophetic urbi et orbi he points out how the ‘tempest’ of the virus has exposed our vital need to be put ‘in touch with our roots’ and with all those things that truly ‘nourish, sustain and strengthen our lives and our communities’, recognising and reintegrating the wisdom and memory of our elders and the vital work of those who are often unappreciated and hidden from view: cleaners, nurses, caregivers. These life-giving roots are also the ‘antibodies we need to confront adversity’, as opposed to all that is false and superficial in our daily lives. Francis’s Lenten call to the Church to return wholeheartedly to God consists of making a comprehensive and compassionate review of our shared reality and choosing between what nourishes and what fails to nourish the soul.[8]
The twin threads of conversion and discernment, encountered throughout Francis’s official writings, are expressed at some depth in the latest post-synodal apostolic exhortation, Christus vivit, addressed ‘to young people and to the entire People of God’. After Amoris laetitia – also the product of long processes of communal discernment – it is, significantly, the document in which the words ‘discern’ and ‘discernment’ appear most frequently in his writings to date, with 34 mentions in 74 pages and a dedicated chapter on the vocational discernment of young people.[9] In it we get a real sense of what both conversion and discernment mean in the mind of Francis and, in particular, how they relate to one another.
Conversion, for the Church, says Francis, can be summarised as ‘renewal and a return to youth’. This is not youth in the false sense of a culture obsessed with youthful beauty or novelty, but the true youthfulness, life and energy that spring from openness to the ever-new Risen Jesus. It is an ongoing process of transformation that involves holding in creative tension the best of what is old, the Church’s life-nourishing roots, with an openness to embrace what is new in Christ. It means a constant readiness to respond to grace, to let go of what does not nourish and start again, returning to its ‘first love’: the source of the Church’s youthfulness and unique identity. Christ’s call to conversion, both to the Church as a body and to each individual member, is essentially the same. As Francis says, reaching out to each young person right at the start of his exhortation, the bottom line is that, ‘Christ is alive and he wants you to be alive!’[10]
Conversion in this sense is not a discrete event but rather a continual call to renewal and remaining ever alive in Christ. Francis expresses it using another image later in the document as learning to live fully and fruitfully in ‘the now of God’.[11] Living fully means being fully present to the grace and mercy of God in each moment and each situation, no matter how dark or difficult. We need to let ourselves be ‘saved over and over again’, says Francis, and to return, time and time again, to the God who ‘always embraces us after every fall, helping us to rise and get back on our feet’.[12]
Much could be said about what Francis, in so many ways ‘the discerning Pope’, has to say about spiritual discernment: that means of distinguishing between grace and temptation, as he likes to call it.[13] Fundamentally, he has sought to demystify and declericalise what has sometimes been seen as an abstruse art reserved for the spiritual elite (or copyrighted by Jesuits), regrounding the Church in its own tradition, and the ordinary people of God in their own daily experience, of discernment. Discernment is not a spiritual technique or tool for Francis, but something much deeper and broader. It has to do with the sensus fidei – a spiritual sense beyond mere reason or wisdom, gifted by the Holy Spirit to the faithful, intrinsic to discipleship for all and part of a wider ‘formation of conscience’.[14]
Ultimately discernment is somehow both the seed and the fruit of an ongoing relationship of freedom, trust and receptivity to the Holy Spirit: ‘the graced practice of letting go and letting God lead us’, as Nick Austin has put it so well.[15] It is a gift and a lifelong process of transformation by grace as we learn to become like the one we contemplate and ‘cultivate the very sentiments of Jesus Christ’.[16]
In Christus vivit we see a glimpse of how Francis perceives discernment in action in relation to the accompaniment of young people, which draws telling inspiration from his own Ignatian roots. Using the Emmaus story in Luke’s Gospel as a model for ministry, he points to how Jesus walks with his disciples, accompanying them along the way even while they head in the wrong direction:
He asks them questions and listens patiently to their version of events, and in this way he helps them recognize what they were experiencing. Then, with affection and power, he proclaims the word to them, leading them to interpret the events they had experienced in the light of the Scriptures …. They themselves choose to resume their journey at once in the opposite direction, to return to the community and to share the experience of their encounter with the risen Lord.[17]
This threefold movement of recognising experience, interpreting it in the light of scripture and choosing to respond to grace (rather than temptation), while reflecting the classic ‘See, Judge, Act’ cycle of Cardinal Cardijn, is grounded firmly in the Ignatian tradition of spiritual discernment.
The same dynamic can be observed in Ignatius’ title or preface to the Rules for Discernment of Spirits:
Rules to aid us towards perceiving and then understanding, at least to some extent, the various motions which are caused in the soul: the good motions that they may be received, and the bad that they may be rejected (Exx 313).
For Ignatius, discernment involves a similar threefold process: of perceiving – or recognising – the various threads of one’s experience as they are remembered and brought into consciousness; understanding – or interpreting – these in the light of the gospel, the Church’s tradition and previous experience; and finally choosing to respond to what seems to come from God and rejecting everything else as distraction or temptation. Choice and action are at the heart of the process: the essential task of discernment being to receive the motions of the good spirit and to reject those of the bad, as Rob Marsh says.[18] With his characteristic and uncompromising clarity, Ignatius boils it down in the end to a stark choice between good and bad: between what leads to life – the place of encounter with the living God – and what leads to a dead end.
There is more than a touch of this Ignatian starkness in Pope Francis’s vision of the world, in which discernment is ‘a genuine means of spiritual combat, helping us to follow the Lord more faithfully’. In order to fulfil its mission, the Church must help others to recognise and interpret their experience, and to choose well in response: to learn, in other words, to tell apart the ‘promptings of the good Spirit’ from the ‘traps laid by the evil spirit – his empty works and promises’.[19]
It finally comes down to a Moses-like choice of life over death, led and informed by the Spirit. At both the macro- and micro-levels, the ecclesial and the personal, discernment, for Francis, is essentially a God-given ‘time of choosing’ between ‘what matters and what passes away’; between what helps us get back on track and stay there with regard to God, and all that derails or diverts us.[20] In returning to where we began, it appears not only that Francis perceives an urgent need for conversion to discernment in the Church but that he sees discernment as conversion: a moment-by-moment conversion to Christ and the life-leadings of the Spirit.
Intrinsic to discernment, whether at the individual or institutional level, is an ongoing surrender of our limited ‘plans, certainties and agendas’ to God and a willingness to be led into a new and larger horizon of life.[21] Discernment and conversion converge, it seems, in Francis’s vision for a Christ-centred, Christ-contemplating Church: a Church that is called, and calls others, again and again, to turn back to God, confident in God’s mercy, and to choose life ‘so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days’ (Deuteronomy 30:19–20).
This article was published in The Way, 59/4 (October 2020). To find out more about and subscribe to The Way, please visit theway.org.uk
[1] Pope Francis’, urbi et orbi, ‘Extraordinary Moment of Prayer Presided over by Pope Francis’, 27 March 2020.
[2] Pope Francis, Misericordiae vultus, §10.
[3] Austen Ivereigh, Wounded Shepherd: Pope Francis and His Struggle to Convert the Catholic Church (New York: Henry Holt, 2019); Austen Ivereigh, ‘Remembering Our Future: Pope Francis and the Corona Crisis’, Thinking Faith (8 April 2020), at https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/remembering-our-future-pope-francis-and-corona-crisis, accessed 17 July 2020.
[4] See Nicholas Austin, ‘Francis: The Discerning Pope’, Thinking Faith (9 March 2018), at https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/francis-discerning-pope, accessed 15 July 2020.
[5] Ivereigh, ‘Remembering Our Future’.
[6] Pope Francis, Amoris laetitia, §193.
[7] Pope Francis, Christus vivit, §196.
[8] Pope Francis, urbi et orbi, 27 March 2020.
[9] Amoris laetitia has 46 references in a whopping 364 pages.
[10] Christus vivit, §§34, 50, 1.
[11] This is used as the heading for chapter three in the document. See also Christus vivit, §178.
[12] Christus vivit, §§123, 120.
[13] Austin, ‘Francis: The Discerning Pope’; for example, Christus vivit, §293.
[14] Compare Evangelii gaudium, n.119; and also Christus vivit, §281.
[15] Austin, ‘Francis: The Discerning Pope’.
[16] Christus vivit, §281.
[17] Christus vivit, §237, quoting ‘Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment: Final Document’ (27 October 2018), §4.
[18] Rob Marsh, ‘Imagining Ignatian Spiritual Direction’, The Way, 48/3 (July 2009), 38.
[19] Christus vivit, §§295, 293.
[20] Pope Francis, urbi et orbi blessing, 27 March 2020.
[21] Austin, ‘Francis: The Discerning Pope’.
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