News - Page #77

: Written by: Alex Walker; Published: 01 September 2018

It is impossible to think of a conversion of our activity as a Church that does not include the active participation of all the members of God’s People. Indeed, whenever we have tried to replace, or silence, or ignore, or reduce the People of God to small elites, we end up creating communities, projects, theological approaches, spiritualities and structures without roots, without memory, without faces, without bodies and ultimately, without lives.[2] This is clearly seen in a peculiar way of understanding the Church’s authority, one common in many communities where sexual abuse and the abuse of power and conscience have occurred. Such is the case with clericalism, an approachthat “not only nullifies the character of Christians, but also tends to diminish and undervalue the baptismal grace that the Holy Spirit has placed in the heart of our people”.[3]

Clericalism, whether fostered by priests themselves or by lay persons, leads to an excision in the ecclesial body that supports and helps to perpetuate many of the evils that we are condemning today. To say “no” to abuse is to say an emphatic “no” to all forms of clericalism.

Pope Francis Letter to the People of God

: Written by: Joseph O’Hanlon; Published: 28 August 2018

ACTA COMMENTARY

THE SUNDAY LECTIONARY

TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

YEAR B: YEAR OF MARK

Download >>> Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

: Written by: Derek Reeve; Published: 03 August 2018

Topic of the week from The Tablet

I am increasingly worried by the way in which eucharistic adoration is being promoted by our bishops.

The documents of the Second Vatican Council seem to make it clear that the Eucharist should be at the heart of every Christian community, as the sacred meal in which they are able to be united with Christ and formed ever more perfectly into his living body in the world. After the council, these insights were never acted upon as fully as they might have been, but our Church had begun to have a fuller understanding of the Eucharist as the centre of the Christian community.

With the gradual development of eucharistic adoration and the teaching of the two previous popes, the whole emphasis seems to have changed, and we are returning to an understanding of the Eucharist as the means by which Jesus makes himself present to us so that we may adore him, especially when the Eucharistic Bread is exposed. It treats the Eucharist as an object for the gathering, not an activity of the gathering. The fact that the Lord whom we receive at the Eucharist is the one whom we go out to serve, and, dare I say it, to adore, in our neighbour, seems to have disappeared.

I feel very alone in this but it seems to me that the whole nature of the Church is being changed. Worrying, too, is the fact that the younger priests seem to come out of the seminary with this way of thinking already firmly established, and, of course, it does lead to the view of the priest as the only one who can effect the eucharistic presence rather than the one who presides at the eucharistic meal of the whole community.

Although it sounds an exaggeration, it is almost as if our bishops are promoting a heretical view of the Eucharist, and it makes me fear for our Church in the years to come. The injunction to “take and eat” seems to have been replaced by an order that I am not aware Christ ever gave: to kneel and adore. I would be interested to know if there are others who harbour similar fears for the future of the Church.
Derek P. Reeve
Retired Catholic priest, Portsmouth