Some Notable Posts

Over the past week, in case you missed something of interest. These are the most read (in order of popularity):

1)    Ordinariate Ordinations in Melbourne

2)    The Liturgy of the Ordinariate and the Latin Mass

3)    Ordinariate Togetherness

4)    On Msgr Jeffery Steenson and The Anglo-Catholic

5)    ‘The Blog of Father Stephen Smuts’

6)    500% Increase

7)    The Potentialities of the English Missal for the Ordinariate and the Roman Rite

8)    Church of the Incarnation (ACA/TAC) to be Received into the Ordinariate

9)    The Great Benefits of Forgiveness

10)  This Is Where Dissent Leads: Communion Given to the Dog

Thanks for visiting.

So lets see what the new working week has in store for us. There’s always something bound to happen…

 

This Is Where Dissent Leads: Communion Given to the Dog

The Age (au):

Father Greg Reynolds wants his church of dissident Catholics to welcome all – ”every man and his dog”, one might say, risking the non-inclusive language he deplores – but even he was taken aback when that was put to the test during Mass yesterday.

A first-time visitor arrived late at the Inclusive Catholics service in South Yarra with a large and well-trained German shepherd. When the consecrated bread and wine were passed around, the visitor took some bread and fed it to his dog.

Apart from one stifled gasp, those present showed admirable presence of mind – but the dog was not offered the cup!

Father Reynolds, a Melbourne priest for 32 years, launched Inclusive Catholics earlier this year. He now ministers to up to 40 people at fortnightly services alternating between two inner-suburban Protestant churches.

The congregation includes gay men, former priests, abuse victims and many women who feel disenfranchised, but it is optimistic rather than bitter.

Yesterday a woman, Irene Wilson, led the liturgy and another, Emmy Silvius, preached the homily. Two more passed the bread and wine around.

Father Reynolds – his only clerical adornment a green stole around his neck – played as small a role as he could.

Inclusive Catholics is part of a small but growing trend in the West of disaffiliated Catholics forming their own communities and offering ”illicit” Masses, yet are slightly uncertain of their identities. The question was posed during the service: ”Are we part of the church or are we a breakaway movement?”

Father Reynolds was a thorn in the side of Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart when he preached in 2010 that it was God’s will to have women priests. He resigned as Western Port parish priest last August and had his faculties to act as a priest in Melbourne removed.

He is still a priest, though now on the dole. Mary Fenelon, who usually worships in Abbotsford, comes to this Mass because ”these people are forward-thinkers, and the church is going backwards. This is inclusive and welcoming’…’

(HT:  Fr John Zuhlsdorf)

Dissent, caused by sin, leads to disobedience. Disobedience leads to rebellion. And rebellion ends up in anarchy, a place where dogs are fed communion. Breaks in the Body of Christ, some big, some small, all through schisms and heresies.

 

The Great Benefits of Forgiveness

The Southern Cross:

Have you ever said the words: “I will never forgive you for what you have done to me”? Maybe not, or maybe not often, I hope. But these are common words spoken in anger after an experience of deep disappointment, rejection, violation, manipulation or abuse. We express ourselves in anger because our hearts are wounded by such an experience.

We have to pray to God and ask him to give us the grace to forgive whoever has wronged us. Forgiveness is not ours to give”

The pain that we feel when someone has hurt us, for example, can be so intense, and our immediate reaction is then to direct our anger towards that person in order for him or her to feel the same pain in return.

Immediately we want to react, for example by sending hurtful messages via e-mail, BBM, SMS, Facebook or Twitter. We want to contact their friends and family and share what they have done and how bad they are. We want to take revenge.

Because it is our hearts that are wounded, it makes forgiveness from the heart very difficult and sometimes forgiveness seems impossible. And forgiveness is impossible if we think that we are doing the forgiving.

It is God who forgives the person through us. None of us have a supply of forgiveness stacked up somewhere among our possessions which we can take out and give to other people as needed. We have to pray to God and ask him to give us the grace to forgive whoever has wronged us. Forgiveness is not ours to give.

Unfortunately, the tragedy of our lives is that those who love us, wound us too. These are mostly people very close to us: our parents, our friends, our spouses, our lovers, our children, our neighbours, our teachers, our pastors.

The person whom we expected would be there for us might have wounded us, thereby breaking the bond of communion that existed between us.

We live in community, even between two people, and that community has been broken. This community will never be possible again without the willingness to forgive one another “seventy-seven times”. This means, forgiving until the matter is settled.

What can help us during our experience of woundedness is the fact that we see our friends and family as just that, friends and family—and not God.

We love God, we try to understand God, we know about God, we spend time with God in prayer, but, we are not God.

 

 

Solemn Mass

Msgr Andrew Burnham celebrated the Solemn Mass and preached at the 2012 #Evangelium Conference.