The Augustinian Friars in Britain
Our Hearts are Restless until they Rest in You, Lord
Whither the Church?
The present moment in the Church is compared, in the scale of its historical significance, with the Reformation of the 16th century, and other major developments at 500 year intervals (historians please fill in). It is a time of shattering implications. The Church will never be the same again.
Many, including the Pope are peering into the mists to see the way ahead. A significant number of lay people, now theologically literate and concerned are writing in the religious journals. When Pope John XXIII called the Vatican Council he said it was time to cut through the rules and practices that had accumulated over the centuries and to open up the Gospel in the context of the 20th century. Something similar seems to be happening now. Watch and pray!
For those who have apostolic zeal, with the fire of the Holy Spirit in their bellies, it is an exciting prospect.
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What they say
Do not be afraid to guide to Christ each of the brothers and sisters He has entrusted to you, certain that each word, each action, if they come from obedience to God's will, will bear fruit. Appreciate the advantages and recognise the limits of the culture in which we live, in the firm certainty that announcing the Gospel is the greatest service we can do mankind - Pope Benedict at his weekly audience, 26 May.
Catholic missionary activity is much broader today than going to far distant lands. A mission to traditionally Christian countries, whose people have begun turning away from the institutional Church, is also urgent.
The present time demands a new missionary vigour on the part of Christians, who are called to form a mature laity, identified with the Church and sensitive to the complex transformations taking place in our world.
- from Pope Benedict at his final Mass in Lisbon, 14 May and on 13 May at Fatima.
The Church, like Jesus, is meant to measure us at our tallest, to celebrate our divinity from the moment of our birth, to keep our focus on the beckoning horizons of possibility .. The Church is there to reveal to us another courageous way of living, a way of believing in the light while it is still dark. - Fr Daniel O’Leary, The Tablet 23 May.
In the eyes of the follower of Christ there has to be something chillingly sacred in the Murphy Report, something of the Holy Spirit at work in the world ….. In the aftermath of the Murphy and earlier reports very few Catholics are in any doubt that something needing to be knocked down within our church has begun to topple and that a rebuilding towards what the church is intended to be lies ahead of us. In brokenness we awake.
- Ned Prendergast, The Furrow, April 2010
It belongs to us Christians that we rejoice in the very existence of people, with all their fumbling attempts to live and love, whether they are married or divorced or single, whether they are straight or gay, whether their lives are lived in accordance with church teaching or not … The Church should be a community in which people discover God’s delight in them. - Timothy Radcliffe OP to priests
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From here and there
•The discussion must go deeper than changing structures—necessary though that may be. One reason why the theology promulgated by Vatican Council II did not make its full impact was that it was often presented as replacing one set of rules with another.
•‘I do not believe in liberation theology. I believe in Jesus Christ.’ Gustavo Gutierrez, a leading proponent of liberation theology.
•Jesus is always so positive. A catalogue of ‘thou shalt not’s is a lazy but unfaithful expression of the Gospel. The word ‘condemn’ does not belong to Gospel vocabulary.
•As our people go home from Mass on Sunday, do they have smile on the face, a feeling of uplift in the heart, a new spring in the step?
•Tell the truth.
•If there is one organisation on the face of the earth that should have no fear of the TRUTH however hurtful, however embarrassing, however scandalous, surely it is the Church of Jesus Christ.
•(Let us pass our time honourably) not in revelling and drunkenness, not in lust and wantonness, not in quarrels and rivalries. Rather, arm yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ; spend no more time on nature and nature’s appetites. - the passage from Romans 13; 13,14 that was decisive for Augustine. We could add our own ‘not in ..’ but equally conclude ‘Rather arm yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ’.
•The Church needs laypeople who are theologically qualified and are committed, willing and allowed to take on pastoral responsibilities.
•The Church also needs priests to gather God’s people together to celebrate the breaking of bread .
The Church needs religious who will venture where others fear to tread.