Pope Francis in Lisbon: Meeting with Authorities, Civil Society and Diplomatic Corps

 Pope Francis met with the political leaders and representatives of civil society in Lisbon, as part of his visit to Portugal for World Youth Day 2023. In much of his address, he drew on Lisbon's connection to the sea, using the idea of the ocean as a connecting theme. This gives Pope Francis' address a certain beauty, particularly when it asks on which course Europe and the West are sailing. Do read the whole here: Meeting with Authorities, Civil Society and Diplomatic Corps.

I choose a paragraph to cite below, which gives a flavour of the address as whole, and which expresses Pope Francis' position on abortion, family life and euthanasia:

The ocean, this immense expanse of water, recalls the origins of life. In today’s developed world, paradoxically, the defence of human life, menaced by a creeping utilitarianism that uses life and discards it – a culture that discards life, has now become a priority. I think of so many unborn children, and older persons who are abandoned, of the great challenge of welcoming, protecting, promoting and integrating those who come from afar and knock on our doors, and the isolation felt by so many families that find it hard to bring children into the world and raise them. Here too, we might ask: “Where are you sailing, Europe and the West, with the discarding of the elderly, walls of barbed wire, massive numbers of deaths at sea and empty cradles? Where are you sailing? Where are you sailing if, before life’s ills, you offer hasty but mistaken remedies: like easy access to death, a convenient answer that seems ‘sweet’ but is in fact more bitter than the waters of the sea?” I am thinking here of many advanced laws concerning euthanasia.

Later in his address, Pope Francis makes a plea for a reversal in the decline of the birth rate in Europe and the West: 

Young people are the future. Yet they encounter much that is disheartening: lack of jobs, the dizzying pace of contemporary life, hikes in the cost of living, the difficulty of finding housing and, even more disturbing, the fear of forming families and bringing children into the world. In Europe and, more generally, in the West, we are witnessing a decline in the demographic curve: progress seems to be measured by developments in technology and personal comfort, whereas the future calls for reversing the fall in the birth rate and the weakening of the will to live. A healthy politics can accomplish much in this regard; it can be a generator of hope. It is not about holding on to power, but about giving people the ability to hope. Today more than ever, it is about correcting the imbalances of a market economy that produces wealth but fails to distribute it, depriving people of resources and security. Political life is challenged once more to see itself as a generator of life and concern for others. It is called to show foresight by investing in the future, in families and in children, and by promoting intergenerational covenants that do not cancel the past but forge bonds between young and old.  

"Arise and bear witness": Pope Francis message for World Youth Day 2021

 I had missed the fact that the celebration of World Youth Day 2021 in the universal Church had been transferred to the Solemnity of Christ the King this year - an understandable occurrence in the light of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic earlier this year.

Pope Francis' message for the celebration of the day, released in September, is on the website of the Holy See. The major part of the message is a meditation on the encounter between St Paul and Jesus on the road to Damascus. At each point in his reflection, Pope Francis makes an application of St Paul's experience to that of young people today. It makes a lovely read for anyone who wishes to be active in the life of the Church.

At the end of his message, Pope Francis makes a series of appeals to young people:

Today Christ speaks to you the same words that he spoke to Paul: Arise! Do not remain downcast or caught up in yourself: a mission awaits you! You too can testify to what Jesus has begun to accomplish in your lives. In Jesus’ name, I ask you: 

- Arise! Testify that you too were blind and encountered the light. You too have seen God’s goodness and beauty in yourself, in others and in the communion of the Church, where all loneliness is overcome. 

- Arise! Testify to the love and respect it is possible to instil in human relationships, in the lives of our families, in the dialogue between parents and children, between the young and the elderly. 

- Arise! Uphold social justice, truth and integrity, human rights. Protect the persecuted, the poor and the vulnerable, those who have no voice in society, immigrants. 

- Arise! Testify to the new way of looking at things that enables you to view creation with eyes brimming with wonder, that makes you see the Earth as our common home, and gives you the courage to promote an integral ecology. 

- Arise! Testify that lives of failure can be rebuilt, that persons spiritually dead can rise anew, that those in bondage can once more be free, that hearts overwhelmed by sorrow can rediscover hope. 

- Arise! Testify joyfully that Christ is alive! Spread his message of love and salvation among your contemporaries, at school and in the university, at work, in the digital world, everywhere. 

The Lord, the Church and the Pope trust you and appoint you to bear witness before all those other young people whom you will encounter on today’s “roads to Damascus”. Never forget that “anyone who has truly experienced God’s saving love does not need much time or lengthy training to go out and proclaim that love. Every Christian is a missionary to the extent that he or she has encountered the love of God in Christ Jesus” (Evangelii Gaudium, 120).

Christ the King: a mixed reflection

The Solemnity of Christ the King, to be celebrated this coming weekend, prompts each year a mixed reflection. In the dioceses of England and Wales, it is also celebrated as "Youth Sunday", when, as the branding goes, we celebrate and encourage the part that young people play in the Church. In my own diocese, it is an opportunity for the promotion of the diocesan youth service in parishes.

Inevitably, this celebration of young people moves attention from the celebration of the liturgical feast to something else, especially if the only marking of the day is during the celebration of Mass. and this is the first cause of a mixed reflection on my part. But a second cause is that I wonder whether the celebration of youth ministry, as if that is an end in itself in the mission of the Church, is really something we should do in isolation from a wider consideration.

Whilst a universal call to holiness, and to the living and practice of a Christian life, exists from the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation, the way in which each individual lives out that call requires a specification, a making more precise for the individual situation, of that universal call. The experience of a particular charism in the Church, perhaps through the life of an ecclesial movement, seems to me an important way of achieving this specification of the universal call to holiness. I am not sure that youth ministry always captures this, and perhaps it is this need for a specification of the call to holiness that might better be the focus for a Youth Sunday.

My own background from student days was FAITH Movement, and the current issue of their magazine offers two articles that respond to my mixed reflections. Fr Nesbitt provides an account of the theological vision of FAITH Movement on pages 22-25, a vision that offers a charism that is able to form a vivid Christian life.  It is also a vision highly relevant to the liturgical celebration of Christ the King. The editorial, published as a separate article on the website, is entitled On to 2022. It is the remarks about teaching of the Catholic faith that caught my attention:

We also need a clear affirmation of the right and obligation of Catholics to teach the Faith in the family, in church, and in Catholic schools. This need not be announced in any angry or polemical spirit, but it must be stated clearly as something positive and as contributing to the common good, confirming the human rights of families as stated in international charters.

Can we just make it up?

In his newsletter for last weekend, our parish priest reflected on martyrdom in the light of several feast days occurring around this time: St Oliver Plunkett, Sts John Fisher and Thomas More, St John the Baptist and, today, Sts Peter and Paul. The italics added below are mine:

Some martyrs were ordered on pain of death to deny Christ and conform to false worship, and refused. Others, like John the Baptist, paid with their lives for preaching a message that was uncomfortable for those in power, or for standing firm on a point of principle, like Thomas More and John Fisher. Perhaps we find the last category most puzzling, in an age when religion is seen as a purely private matter. Yet persecution of a different form certainly occurs when people publicly express opinions that are out of step with certain fashionable orthodoxies, and find themselves, not martyred (in the West at least) but effectively silenced and excluded from discourse. 

More and Fisher were martyrs not only for truth, but also for conscience, and for freedom. Many people today are uncomfortable with the idea of objective truth, a reality that they must accept and conform to, rather than invent for themselves. If truth is considered subjective and relative, conscience is even more so. And being subjective, these things must be kept private, so as not to intrude on the freedom of others, including the freedom not to be challenged by differing points of view: that is the way many people seem to think today. However the Christian faith is one that cannot simply be privatised. It is not just a question of proclaiming Christ to the world, which is indeed the heart of the church’s mission, but even more a matter of simply living out our faith and putting into practice the values of the gospel. If the highest of these values is love, we should remember that love sometimes requires us to speak up for the good of others, rather than simply keep quiet.

Father did not directly refer to it, but his words prompted me to think about one of the "fashionable orthodoxies" of our day, namely, the widespread acceptance of ideas of LGBTQ identities. Public conversation has to all intents and purposes replaced talk of biological sex with talk of gender, a somewhat less exact concept (though, interestingly, when Matthew Paris argued recently in the Times newspaper that the experience of gay men in 1989 was not one of wanting to change in any way their identification as male, he appeared to restore, at least for some within the LGBTQ community, biological sex to contemporary debate). The term "gender assigned at birth", for example, is being promoted as an alternative to biological sex.

.... gender isn’t about someone’s anatomy, it is about who they know them self to be. There are many different gender identities, including male, female, transgender, gender neutral, non-binary, agender, pangender, genderqueer, two-spirit, third gender, and all, none or a combination of these.

When I read this extract from a website aimed at teenagers (a site called teen talk, with a .ca domain name), I did wonder: are young people being subject to an ideology that essentially says to them "you can choose from a list" as far as "gender" is concerned, rather than learning to grow in a given biological sex, male or female? Is it really sensible to ask young people to, in effect, choose "who they know them self to be", rather than helping them to grow in living the reality of a male or female sex? 

[I was struck on first reading this extract by the last part: "... and all, none or a combination of these". It really does suggest the idea of gender as being something that a young person can make up, separated from any reality of their biological presentation. Indeed, the next paragraph begins: "There are many more gender identities than we have listed..."]

Pope Benedict in Lebanon: "From across the Middle East the young people came"

Unfortunately, Pope Benedict's visit to Lebanon, full of significance for the countries of the Middle East, has been overshadowed as far as media coverage goes by some photographs taken in France and by the reaction to a crass Youtube video produced in California. The full coverage from the Vatican news website is at Pope Benedict XVI's journey to Lebanon.

Earlier this evening, Pope Benedict met with the young people from all over the Middle East. Vatican Radio have a report of this meeting: Pope: from across the Middle East the young people came.

...many were waiting to see what the security situation would be like before deciding to come. Some didn’t care about that at all, crossing over the border from war-torn Syria – one young girl saying she hadn’t fled the country but come here on purpose to bring the Holy Father’s prayers for peace back to her suffering home. And they came too from the Holy land, Syria, Iraq, Kurdistan, Jordan, Europe, the Americas and Australia – from across every continent to celebrate the peace that Pope Benedict wants to share in a suffering world. And they weren’t just Christians either – at least one thousand Muslims came, many singing in mixed-faith choirs.

This second report describes what Pope Benedict had to say to the young people: Pope to Muslims and Christians: "Come together and end violence"....  The full text of Pope Benedict's speech can be found at the Vatican website: Meeting with young people: Address of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI (and at the Vatican news site here). The greetings to young Muslims and to young people from Syria are particularly moving:

I should like now to greet the young Muslims who are with us this evening. I thank you for your presence, which is so important. Together with the young Christians, you are the future of this fine country and of the Middle East in general. Seek to build it up together! And when you are older, continue to live in unity and harmony with Christians. For the beauty of Lebanon is found in this fine symbiosis. It is vital that the Middle East in general, looking at you, should understand that Muslims and Christians, Islam and Christianity, can live side by side without hatred, with respect for the beliefs of each person, so as to build together a free and humane society.

I understand, too, that present among us there are some young people from Syria. I want to say how much I admire your courage. Tell your families and friends back home that the Pope has not forgotten you. Tell those around you that the Pope is saddened by your sufferings and your griefs. He does not forget Syria in his prayers and concerns, he does not forget those in the Middle East who are suffering. It is time for Muslims and Christians to come together so as to put an end to violence and war.

The same link at the Vatican site includes a video of the meeting. If you do watch the video, it is worth remembering that the setting, though it appears peaceful enough, is close to regions of great tension and present warfare.

Living together

... is a phrase that can have a perfectly innocuous meaning. I live together with my neighbours, with my work colleagues, with my friends.

It can also mean moving in with an opposite sex partner without getting married. For different couples the circumstances may vary, but I have a sense that it will in most situations be the girl who makes herself most vulnerable in these arrangements. That vulnerability is both material and emotional. [One can perhaps extend the idea of "living together" to same sex partners moving in together, when I sense that the range and dynamics of vulnerability might be much deeper.]

The readiness with which young people do this makes Catholic Analysis' post on the subject of relevance. I think the suggestion in this post that there is something lost that cannot be regained is worthy of particular reflection.

Spirit in the City 2010

I missed Spirit in the City 2009. I am also going to miss Spirit in the City 2010. But that doesn't mean you can't go. When I was able to take part in one or two of the events of the first such celebration, I found it a most interesting and rewarding experience.

This year I will be away for this particular weekend, which includes the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, and not for the first time. Three years ago we were in Assisi, and spoilt for choice as to where to take part in a Eucharistic Procession. This year it will be Lisieux and Bayeux. Lisieux on 6th June:

Le Dimanche 6 juin 2010

Activités du Sanctuaire : Fêtes liturgiques : Fête du Saint-Sacrement

10h30 messe

15h30 vêpres et procession

Lieu : à la Basilique

Not quite Leicester Square, but I think it will do ...

Chiara Luce Badano

A video has been posted on Youtube, introducing the life of Chiara Luce Badano. This young member of the Focolare will be beatified in September of this year.

See also my earlier post here.

H/T Editor's Briefing.

The Rome Reports youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/romereports

Pope Benedict XVI: Visit to Malta (9)

Ann Arco has coverage of Pope Benedict's meeting with young people on the waterfront of Valletta harbour. What is interesting in this coverage is the nature of the questions asked by the young people. These suggest a tension and anxiety in their Christian living and in their relationship with the Church. The impression is that Pope Benedict gave a pre-prepared talk that did not offer a specific answer to the challenges reflected in the questions of the young people.

ZENIT's coverage is here, and gives a description of Pope Benedict's arrival in Valletta Harbour. It looks as it if was quite something!

Pope Benedict XVI: Visit to Malta (8)

Ann Arco's diary has some photographs of Pope Benedict's arrival, by boat, for his meeting with young people on the waterfront of the harbour in Valletta: here, here and here.

How on earth ...

... can this trip be justified? [follow link, and then use the "previous posts" calendar to find the post for 15th March 2010, to find my source]

By the time you are reading this I will (BA permitting) be in the air to Los Angeles. .... With me will be 18 school chaplains, Heads of RE and Parish Youth Co-ordinators, all from within Brentwood Diocese, and all travelling to the Los Angeles RE Congress, an event where 35,000 people gather to hear the world’s specialists in Youth Ministry discuss vibrant and insightful ways to help young people engage with faith, and to help those adults working with them to deepen and strengthen their own spirituality. So now that when you hear “he’s in Los Angeles” you know that this is, in fact, serious work ...

Founders Day/World Thinking Day

This is another delayed post - though less to do with my slow working brain and more to do with my waiting to see if its subject matter would appear elsewhere on the web. One report of the event is here, but I haven't been able to find any media reporting.

The Scout and Girl Guide movements celebrate Founders Day and World Thinking Day on 22nd February each year, that date being, I understand, the birthday of Robert Baden-Powell the founder of the scout and guide movements. Each year the day is marked by a service at Westminster Abbey, where there is a memorial to Lord and Lady Baden-Powell. This year, the service took place on Saturday 28th February.

One of my nephews was escorting the Scout banner during the service, and I had the opportunity to accompany another nephew in the congregation. I did not really know much about the Guide and Scout movements, apart from contact with the groups in my own parish in organising events like Evening Prayer for Christ the King, and Stations of the Cross. This year, it being the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Girl Guides, it was the Guides who had the lead in the service (three years ago, a similar lead was taken by the Scouts for their centenary). They showcased the history and the work of the movement.

And I have to say that I was most impressed by what I learnt about the movements during the service.  In an  ordinary and practical way the Guides and Scouts address issues that others would turn into slogans and political programmes. I will quote the promises of the two movements, which were renewed at one point during the service, and then offer some observations.

The Scout Promise is:


On My Honour, I promise that I will do my best
To do my duty to God and to the Queen,
To help other people
And to keep the Scout Law

The Scout Law is:


A Scout is to be trusted.
A Scout is loyal.
A Scout is friendly and considerate.
A Scout belongs to the worldwide family of Scouts.
A Scout has courage in all difficulties.
A Scout makes good use of time and is careful of possessions and property.
A Scout has self-respect and respect for others.

The Guide Promise


I promise that I will do my best
To love my God
To serve my Queen and my country
To help other people
and To keep the Guide Law

The Guide Law

A Guide is honest, reliable and can be trusted.
A Guide is helpful and uses her time and abilities wisely.
A Guide faces challenge and learns from her experiences.
A Guide is a good friend and a sister to all Guides.
A Guide is polite and considerate.
A Guide respects all living things and takes care of the world around her.

At the start of the service, three flags were processed to the altar - the Guide flag, the Scout flag and the Union flag; and both promises include a promise of service to the Queen (this aspect of the promise is, I presume, suitably adapted in other countries). Remembering that the Guide and Scout movements are both international movements, and that both draw members from across the breadth of society, I felt that the way this aspect of their promises was represented in the service, and is represented in the life of the movements, expressed exactly the right approach to having a sense of loyalty to one's nation. I was prompted to reflect on how I viewed the monarchy; one should perhaps see it as a symbol of the country that stands distinct from any particular political allegiance, and our present Queen, Elizabeth II, has lived the vocation represented by that symbol in a very faithful way.
 
Another aspect of the service that struck me was its approach to religion in the life of the Guides and Scouts, something represented in the promises by the references to duty towards and love of God. This reference to God in the promises can be adapted so that those who are not Christians can address it appropriately in accordance with their religion. I can't find it on their websites at the moment, but I understand that they work on the basis that their members will live fully the life of their own religious communities and that participation in religious events as Guides or Scouts is voluntary. The two movements did, however, seem to be perfectly comfortable celebrating their Founders Day/Thinking Day service in a Christian Abbey and making use of Christian prayers. I am sure that many readers of this blog will be familiar with Guide and Scout groups that are affiliated to Catholic parishes or to other Christian churches (my own nephews are members of a Scout group run by a nearby Methodist church). Again, without making a big fuss about it, the two movements seem to have captured exactly the right approach to the place of religion in the life of society and to the contribution that religion makes to the good of society as a whole.
 
A third aspect that struck me was the sense of friendship, a sense that was more than just being friends with people you know. I gained a real sense during the service - and it is reflected in the promises - that every Guide or Scout tries to be a friend to every other Guide or Scout, and perhaps especially those in other countries who they couldn't possibly know in an individual way.
 
The fourth aspect to strike me really grows out from the previous three. It is the sense of service to others and of responsibility in one's own life. Guides and Scouts put into practice in an ordinary way what others would make a fuss about under the headings of "citizenship" or "social cohesion". I have to say, as a personal point of view, and one that is not based on my own living of Guide and Scout ideals, that this sense of service to others appears to me to gain its depth and authenticity from being grounded in the first three points mentioned above: an appropriate sense of one's country, a correct approach to religion in the life of society and the sense of comradeship.
 
The founding inspiration of the Guide and Scout movements has something in common, I think, with that of the Focolare. The idea of camps familiar in the two movements is rather like the idea of a Mariapolis, particularly as it was experienced in the early days of the Focolare. The dialogue across four generations of a Guiding family that was part of the service at Westminster Abbey reflected the sort of testimonies that would be typical of a Focolare event. The idea of doing a small thing in your own life or for your neighbour, as your contribution to changing the world, would again be familiar to young people in Focolare. At one point during the service, there was also a reference to living in the present moment, between the past and the future - again, a thought that would be familiar to the Focolare. The place of religion in a spirituality that promotes a universal friendship is also something that would be familiar to the Focolare.

CYMFed

.... sounds to me, in rather irreverent mood as I post, a bit like a parcel delivery company rather than the Catholic Youth Ministry Federation.

Posting has been going on at Catholic and Loving it on the subject of CYMFed. I am afraid yours truly hit the "Say it now" button a bit quickly after reading the most recent post, but you can go and look at the evidence here to assess the damage. The links at the bottom of that post will take you to the previous entries in the "series" at Catholic and Loving it.

My own earlier, and more thoughtful, post on the subject is here. Reading this post will give you a more considered context to my comment at Catholic and Loving it.

Committee or charism?

Not infrequently I find myself talking about some organisation or other in the Church and asking the person I am talking to about the charism or particular founding intuition of the organisation. I think about diocesan youth services in this way, and the question could also be extended to other diocesan set ups, such as the justice and peace commission, etc. This doesn't mean that I think these various committees should necessarily be disbanded. It does mean that I think that, if they are to successfully renew their activity in the life of the Church, they should seek an inspiration or charism round which to form and direct their work; or they might as well disband. In a recent conversation it was the National Conference of Priests; this post - Catholic Youth Quango - raises the same question with regard to the latest enterprise in national Catholic youth ministry.

Yes, there is a nice acronym. Yes, there appears to be a launch congress. But no, there is no sign of a patron saint, no sign of what are characteristic features of the new movements, Eucharistic and Marian devotion. Look at their six objectives - and, since it doesn't seem to have properly formed or launched yet, the claim to be "the single most experienced and qualified body in the UK to hold, protect and further the vision of youth ministry" seems fanciful.

But absolutely no sense of being founded or begun in response to a particular gift or grace from God, or, indeed, to a particularly discerned need in the Church and the world (I don't think they are offering anything that isn't already out there, in a much more lively form, within the framework of the charisms of the new movements).

Feast of Christ the King in West Hull

Catholic and Loving it has an account of how a group of young people celebrated the Feast of Christ the King last Sunday. I link to it here, because of its resonance with what we did here in Romford on that day.

Let's do some research ...

... into the blindingly obvious? Or, perhaps, to ignore the blindingly obvious?

Independent Catholic News are carrying the following news item.

Bishops to research youth ministry provision in England and Wales
In a brief statement on Friday, the Bishops' Conference announced plans to carry out research into the provision of youth ministry in England and Wales. Monsignor Andrew J Faley, Assistant General Secretary of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales wrote:

Following the closure of the Catholic Youth Services earlier this year, the Bishops of England and Wales have instructed that research is to be carried out to determine the current provision for youth ministry within the Dioceses, and directions for further development. This work will be carried out by an Interim Youth Ministry Co-ordinator under the supervision of Bishop Kieran Conry, within the Bishops' Department of Evangelisation and Catechesis.

One shouldn't really generalise, and there are some aspects of the ministry of diocesan youth services that have value (and some that probably don't have value), but .....

..... some of the best youth ministry in the UK is to be found in the work of the new movements, or among clergy and young people who have received a formation from one or other of those movements.

It's not rocket science, and it doesn't take a research project to realise that.

So will the new movements be ignored in this research? Or, if not ignored, will it effectively marginalise them? Or, more positively, will it be used as an opportunity to grow the collaboration/ecclesial communion between dioceses and movements, between hierarchical structure and charismatic gifts?

The Holy Trinity in Catechesis

The October-December 2008 issue of The Sower came through my letter box today. This is the magazine published by Maryvale Institute, in collaboration with Franciscan University, Steubenville.

One article is entitled "Loss and Retrieval of the Holy Trinity in Catechesis". It is an adaptation of an article that appeared in the September-October 2008 issue of FAITH Magazine, that can be found here.

The General Directory for Catechesis speaks of the necessary internal structure of catechesis as follows:
"every mode of presentation must always be Christocentric-trinitarian: Through Christ to the Father in the Holy Spirit" (cf Ephesians 2:18). If catechesis lacks these three elements or neglects their proper relationship, the Christian message can certainly lose its proper character".

The last parts of the article are an analysis of the reasons for a loss of the sense of the Trinity in our catechesis, and suggestions for correcting those reasons. A couple of the corrections suggested:

... a solution here is for every priest, parent and catechist to be attentive to the books and conference speakers in this regard: to check resources for the occurrence of the terms "Blessed Trinity", "God the Father", Jesus, Son of God" and to take seriously any indication of avoidance of such terms.

Responding to resources and programmes that explicitly decline to refer to God as Father or Son, on the grounds of promoting inclusiveness in language, the article suggests:

The answer, of course, is not to throw out the greatest mystery and revelation of all time, but the method that is designed explicitly to hinder its transmission. One initial way to check a programme is to look for explicit references to Jesus as God, Son of God, Son of the Father, God made man. Priests responsible for catechesis and key catechists who assist them, need to grow in an appreciation of the 'pedagogy of God', a pedagogy by which catechetical methods can be judged as to whether they are a "guarentee of fidelity to content" or not.

These criteria of judgement provide a positive way of evaluating the official resources prepared for celebrating Youth Sunday.

I think you will find that the materials on the website fail these criteria of judgement - almost totally. [We can perhaps see the suggested materials for the Penitential rite affirming the divinity of Christ by referring to "Lord Jesus", but I could find no Trinitarian reference anywhere.] The following prayer is quite typical, and totally lacking in any Christological or Trinitarian expression. The contrast with the Liturgical formulation of addressing prayers to the Father, through the Son in the Holy Spirit could not be clearer.

Brilliant God,we celebrate your wonderful world and we thank you for the gift of your creation.On this National Youth Sunday inspire us, we pray, to Reclaim the Future!Help us to see how our actions today will make a difference tomorrow. And bring us together in faith to make that difference a positive thing. Amen.

How many of our parish priests will apply the catechetical discernment suggested in the Sower article to the Youth Sunday resources? And how many catechists will realise that there is even a discernment to be undertaken?

Feast of Christ the King

The official materials that have been prepared for Youth Sunday here in England and Wales are coming in for some fierce criticism. Catholic and Loving it has the low down, first of all here, and then here.

Herewith is the text of a letter that I will be sending out to the leaders of the uniformed organisations (Brownies, Cubs, etc) in our parish next week. All done with the parish priest's knowledge and permission.

Feast of Christ the King 2008

15th October 2008

Dear

Celebration of Evening Prayer for the Feast of Christ the King (Youth Sunday)

I am writing to invite you and your organization to join again in a time of Eucharistic Adoration, with Evening Prayer, to celebrate the Feast of Christ the King. As you may be aware, this Feast is also marked as Youth Sunday in the Dioceses of England and Wales, and so it is quite appropriate that young people should take a lead in celebrating this day. The celebration will take place from 5 pm to 6 pm on Sunday 23rd November 2008.

My intention is that we should start the celebration with a procession (including standards) to the Altar to expose the Blessed Sacrament. We will then have a short time of Adoration, perhaps with a reading and catechesis. This will be followed by our praying the Evening Prayer of the Feast of Christ the King, as we did last year. There will be plenty to sing and to join in.

1. I suggest that the Rainbows and Beavers help to carry candles etc in the procession at the beginning and again at the end. We can arrange all of this on the day itself.

2. I suggest that the Cubs provide three readers, and the Brownies three readers, for the intercessions during Evening Prayer. (I will get the prayers to you nearer
the time.)

3. I suggest that the Scouts and Guides help lead the saying of the psalms during Evening Prayer. We can make the arrangements for this on the day itself, though I have suggested that the Guides might lead us in singing the second psalm of Evening Prayer.

I hope that these arrangements are suitable, and that you will be able to join us for this celebration. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you think we should do anything differently.

Yours sincerely

This event has been very enthusiastically supported over the last three years by the young people and their group leaders. But my posters will no doubt have to compete with the nationally produced ones on the parish noticeboard, with most people not realising the implications of the contrast.

An unfortunate aspect of the official materials is that, despite their presentation as ideas for use at Mass on the Feast of Christ the King, they are actually Liturgically un-usable. Some elements could be used for, say, a school assembly or RE lesson - the skit on the Gospel as a news headlines lends itself to this, though it might be seen as being irreverent or satirical towards the original Scriptural text and might need handling with care as a result.

Another unfortunate aspect is that I think the "livesimply" programme can be integrated into the tradition of the Church's teaching and living of poverty. This would require a much greater Christological and eschatological grounding than I have seen in the materials associated with this programme. With that integration, I believe it has the potential to become a very powerfully evangelising, and contemporary, expression of a part of the Church's spiritual heritage.

Two asides on "A Challenging Reform"

Since it arrived, I have been reading (rather slowly) Archbishop Piero Marini's "A Challenging Reform". Without stopping and consulting all the documents being referred to as you go along, it isn't easy to follow the story in all its implications.

On p.102 ff, Archbishop Marini describes some of the discussions taking place around concelebration. One of the questions considered was that of the number of concelebrants to be allowed, and their proximity to the altar. The discussion reads in a remarkably topical way, given current discussion about the "large celebrations" associated with Papal visits. If I have understood Archbishop Marini's account correctly, the Consilium/Congregation for Rites stepped back from defining a maximum number of 50 with an episcopal faculty to allow a greater number when appropriate. Instead, nothing was defined in this regard in the rite of concelebration published in March 1965. The question at issue during the discussion, of course, was exactly the same as the one at issue in the current discussion. How, in the context of a large concelebration, can it be arranged so that a concelebrating priest genuinely achieves an "actual participation" in the Eucharistic Prayer? Does this require a specific sight of the species being consecrated? Does it require a certain proximity to the altar? It appears difficult to define one particular rule that will cover all possible situations, but the criterion of enabling each concelebrant's "actual participation" might provide a general criterion that could be applied to each individual situation.

On pp.144-145, Archbishop Marini comments (in passing) on the negative response of the Holy See to a request to celebrate the Liturgy of the Word separately with children and then have them join the rest of the congregation for the Liturgy of the Eucharist. A similar negative response was given to a request for permission to allow trained lay people to distribute Holy Communion. Both these requests were made by a spanish bishop, Cardinal Tabera, in the years before 1971, when he was appointed Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship. Both practices are now part of ordinary pastoral experience in many parishes.

I do wonder, though, about the efficacy of "children's liturgy" on a Sunday morning. With my teacher's hat on, I ask questions like: what is the objective being sought? [Is it just a kind of child minding to reduce disturbance in the Church during the readings? Is it to allow the children to have access to the readings in a simplified form, to improve their understanding/participation?] Has anyone looked at where the children are "coming from"? [What styles of particpation are appropriate for different ages? If watching activity on the sanctuary is appropriate, why take very young children out for the Gospel procession? At a simple level, children can still participate through posture - sitting, and then standing for the Gospel. In principle at least, though I recognise the difficulty of language, the "story telling" aspect of the Liturgy of the Word should be familiar experience to children, so surely it should be the part of the Liturgy in which they can most readily participate, given appropriate strategies?]Has anyone clearly defined where they want to move the children to as a result of their taking part in children's liturgy? [If we want to move them to a fuller participation in the Liturgy as they grow older, surely it is counter productive to take them out of Church for the confiteor, the Gloria, the readings, parts of the liturgy where there is ample opportunity for them to see participation being modelled for them?] I get the impression that "children's liturgy" is a kind of received wisdom that is handed on without anyone really asking the question: what is it for? and is it achieving what we think it is for?

I am beginning to think along two lines on this issue. One is that the fundamental aim is to grow children's participation in the Liturgy. As I watch older children, teenagers and families at Mass, one of the things that strikes me in some cases is that there is a lack of real participation. This is probably partly because of lack of doctrinal knowledge about what is happening at Mass; but I think it is also because parishes do not teach participation (in the real sense, not in the "doing something" like being a reader or singer sense!). A First Communion programme, for example, could focus almost entirely around issues of participation: the meaning and practice of different postures, genuflection, things to watch during Mass and the like, giving parents strategies to use with their children to encourage their participation (simple things, like, no toys or crayons and bring them up to the front where they can see). The pattern of a Saturday morning teaching session followed by a "celebration" Mass on the Sunday morning [again, I start to ask questions like what is the aim of that Sunday morning Mass? What does it intend to achieve for the children involved? See second line of thougth below] as widely practiced does not appear to deliver on participation.

My second line of thought is to think that there is also a role for catechists to work with families and children during Mass, to encourage participation - helping children to say the responses or adopt the correct posture, or to read along with the prayers, or to be attentive to what they can see happening in the sanctuary. I think most parents, particularly in situations where only one parent comes to Mass with the children, would welcome this help.

The long term outcome of this would be (hopefully) teenagers who are so used to coming to Mass and participating properly that it doesn't occur to them as teenagers to do anything else but go to Mass. And teenagers who participate properly at Mass are not going to lapse ... so often those who come without participating will lapse.

Stations of the Cross and Eucharistic Adoration

I have been intending to post a report on the Stations of the Cross and Eucharistic Adoration held in the parish last Sunday afternoon. This was an activity with the youth organisations of the parish - Beavers and Rainbows (youngest), Cubs and Brownies (younger), Scouts and Guides (young). I guess at about 80 people being there, but was a little disappointed compared to previous years attendance. I shouldn't complain - it was about 80 more people than if we hadn't run the event, and those who took part gained from doing so.

The "youngest" carried the cross in turn, and processed as a group to each station round the Church. The "younger" and "young" groups provided readers for each of the stations. At each station, I introduced the station and read the Scripture passage while the young people read the meditation and prayer. I have a set of words for "Were you there when they crucified my Lord", adapted to each of the stations, and we sang these between each station. The meditations have been edited from those written by (then) Cardinal Ratzinger in 2005, which have a motif of the Way of the Cross leading us to the Eucharist, a motif of Jesus as the grain of wheat that is buried, dies and then rises to new life as food for us all.

At the end of the Stations, Fr Tom processed with the Blessed Sacrament in the monstrance, accompanied by candles, to the altar for Adoration. "This is our God, the Servant King" was very powerful as we sang it during the procession. I gave a short catechesis on Adoration (see Pope Benedict in Cologne on proskynesis and adoratio, but I didn't use the words themselves ...) and then we spent a few minutes in silent Adoration. We then received the Lord's blessing in the Eucharist, and finished with a version of the Magnificat.

The young people's participation was excellent, both in following the Stations of the Cross and during the time of silent Adoration. The group leaders had done a very good job in organsing the readers, who read to a very high standard.

After running an event like this, I am always reminded of the value of "devotions" in the life of a parish, and their value particularly in relation to the Liturgy. They provide a wonderful opportunity for catechesis, too. I am also reminded that it is possible to use contemporary Christian music in a way that is reverent and genuinely prayerful - often, in the context of Eucharistic Adoration, such songs gain a depth of meaning that their (evangelical) writers may never have anticipated [thought for a future post: this must have some significance for understanding ecumenism].