18 16, August, 2020 C omment catholicweekly.com.au its little red light off to the left and, over and over, thinking ‘Thank you!’ This is such a strange time. Luckily, a friend offered us the possibility of a home Mass on one occasion during the lock- down. We hadn’t gone looking for it because we didn’t want to have an unfair advantage over fellow Catholics. But as the of- fer had come out of the blue we thought ‘why not?’ It was amazing, pure gift. Confessions in the study, Mass celebrated on the fam- ily dinner table, upon which Unmanly tears threaten at Mass I s it good to be able to be back at Mass on Sundays in our parish? You bet. I found myself working from home for several months of the first lockdown. I say ‘first’ because like ev- eryone else here in Sydney I’mwondering whether some security guards might have been getting up to their old tricks - or should I say new tricks, or should I say imple- menting their very peculiar new definition of ‘social dis- tancing,’ or should I just say ‘tricks’- which will see us all in lockdown 2.0? Yet a month or so ago there we were, the whole family, sit- ting in the pews of our parish church in Sydney on the hard, cold wooden pews, rugged up against the winter cold and with the smallest congrega- tion I’ve seen in several years at our first Mass in months. I felt like crying unmanly tears of happiness. Even now I find it hard to remember what seems like a blur, but I remember kneeling there before Mass began, just staring at the tabernacle with Bringing parishes alive J ust recently, Pope Fran- cis asked the parishes of the world to change. He makes this clear in the very title of the Instruction he personally approved in June, The pastoral conversion of the Parish community in the ser- vice of the evangelising mis- sion of the Church . What does this mean? It means parishes continue to be at the heart of mission of the Church, and of the New Evangelisation: “‘Whilst the Parish is perfected and inte- grated in a variety of forms, it nevertheless remains an in- dispensable organism of pri- mary importance in the vis- ible structure of the Church’, whereby ‘evangelisation is the cornerstone of all pastoral ac- tion, the demands of which are primary, preeminent and preferential.” Like each one of us, then, and like the whole Church around the world, our parish- es, too, are called to conver- sion: “If the Parish does not exude that spiritual dynamic of evangelisation, it runs the risk of becoming self-refer- ential and fossilised, offering experiences that are devoid of evangelical flavour and mis- sionary drive, of interest only to small groups.” The Instruction lays out Pope Francis’ four-step pro- posal for doing so. 1 To restart some of the key means from our rich tradition which may have been lacking in recent decades: “faithful to her own tradition and at the same time conscious of her universal mission.” A good example is the un- Pope Francis has summoned what we see as ordinary parishes to be burning, faithful centres of evangelisation. PHOTO: CNS/ Local communities are at theheart of evangelisation. If they need to change, sobe it expected three paragraphs the document spends advo- cating a reboot to pilgrimag- es to shrines - an experience currently foreign to many mil- lennial Catholics. Desired too is attention to the sacrifice of the Mass (“the essential moment for the building up of the parish community”), prayer and Eu- charistic adoration, catechesis and charity to the poor and needy “the poor and exclud- ed must always have a privi- leged place in the heart of the Church.” 2 Due to social change in commitment and relationships to particular places and people, and our far deeper immer- sion in the virtual world, the Pope expects us to be open to work with each other and other groups within and beyond our parish boundar- ies: in other words - no silos. 3 We are also asked for a new openness to doing things in our parishes we have not done before, or done in ways we have not done before: because “mere repetitive action that fails to have an impact upon people’s concrete lives remains a sterile attempt at survival, which is usually welcomed by general indifference.” 4 Finally the Pope asks us to better work together in an authentic complementarity of states of life. Lay people, for example, are not marionettes of the religious and clergy. All the baptised are “protagonists of evangelisation”. Sent out to evangelise the homes, work and public spaces they dominate, each layperson has their place to “work with their pastors in the service of the ecclesial community for its growth and life.” Religious too have their own irreplaceable role - not because of anything they have to do first - but by the very nature of their state of life, “derived firstly, from their ‘being’, that is, from the wit- ness of a radical following of Christ through the profession of the evangelical counsels, and only secondly from their ‘doing”. The priests also have their particular and irreplaceable role in our parishes as pastor, shepherd. No pastoral activity is done in the name of the parish which is not supervised by him, nor is a lay or religious designated “‘pastor’, ‘co-pas- tor’, ‘chaplain’, ‘moderator’, ‘coordinator’, ‘Parish manag- er”. Rather, “Pastors have the task of keeping this dynam- ic alive, so that the baptised realise that they are protago- nists of evangelisation. The presbyterate, whose formation is ongoing, must exercise the art of discern- ment with prudence, in such a way as to allow the life of the Parish, with its diversity of vocations and ministries, to grow and mature.” Praise God for this varied and purposeful life we are called to share in! Fr Josh is a priest of the Em- manuel Community for the Archdiocese of Sydney. With the Archdiocese he publish- es a daily 2-3-minute homily podcast called ‘The Furnace’ at https://the-furnace.capti- vate.fm/ Pope Paul VI G iovanni Battis- ta was ordained priest in 1920. At the age of 25, the young canon lawyer beganwork in the Vatican. During the SecondWorld War he coordinated assis- tance to thousands of ref- ugees. In 1954 he became Archbishop of Milan, in 1958 a cardinal and in June 1963, was elected Pope, taking the name Paul VI. Pope Paul VI will be re- membered for a number of very important acts.The first was his decision to continue the SecondVat- icanCouncil, which had begun in 1962.The result was the collection of doc- uments produced by the Council, many of which had great significance for the life of the Church. In 1968 Pope Paul VI gave the Church the encyc- lical Humanae vitae. Echo- ing the constant tradition of the Church, he declared that no formof contracep- tionwas acceptable as a means of avoiding preg- nancy. It was applauded bymany but also criticised bymany. Another important con- tributionwas the estab- lishment of the Synod of Bishops as a permanent advisory body to the Pope. The reformof the Ro- manCuriawas another. He reduced its bureaucra- cy, streamlined the existing congregations and brought about a broader represen- tation of non-Italians in it. He reformed the litur- gywith the introduction of a newRomanMissal in 1969, with four Eucharistic Prayers instead of the one. Pope Paul VI wrote six other encyclicals, themost important of whichwere Ecclesiam suam (1964) on the Church, Mysteriumfi- dei (1965) on the Eucha- rist, Populorumprogressio (1967) on social devel- opment and Sacerdotalis caelibatus (1967) on priest- ly celibacy. Pope St Paul VI died on 6 August 1978, feast of the Transfiguration. Hewas canonised on 14Octo- ber 2018 and his feast is 29 May, the day of his ordi- nation.
[email protected] Father Flader Columnist I was born during the pontificate of St John Paul II and don’t know much about Paul VI. For what should he be remembered? Fr Josh Miechels Columnist ¾ ¾ Toby Garcia Lopez stood a lit Menorah once giv- en us by an Orthodox Jewish friend. It was the best Mass I had prayed in years. At the best of times it’s quite normal for me to be ob- tuse to the workings of the Spirit, but I realised it was ex- actly what I – what we – need- ed. I was overwhelmed with the goodness of the Lord to us. And now we’re back in our parish - where we should be. It’s cold and hard but we love it – because we’re there. Toby Garcia Lopez is a Syd- ney parishioner