Bishop Peter J Cullinane says critics describe the present translation as clunky, awkward and a too literal translation of the Latin original.

However, Cullinane believes no purpose will be served by any overhaul unless the current guidelines behind liturgical translations are changed.

These were set out by the 2001 instruction Liturgiam Authenticam and said translations must convey the "integral manner" of the original Latin "even while being verbally or syntactically different from it."

Bishop Cullinane was a member of the Episcopal Board of ICEL between 1983 and 2003.

Another retired Bishop, Donald Trautman is calling "for the 1998 English Missal translation, which was approved by more than two-thirds of the United States bishops, to replace the present failed text of the New Roman Missal."

Bishop Trautman is the emeritus Bishop of Eire, and has also served as chairman of the US bishops' conference's Committee on the Liturgy.

The Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) in Ireland has also called for a review of the current English edition.

The ACP has asked that, as a temporary solution, the Irish Bishops allow priests to use the 1998 translation of the Missal.

Last week Archbishop Arthur Roche, the Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship, said the option to use the 1998 translation was not possible as the Roman Liturgy should express the unity of the Church.

Source

• thetabletco.uk
• associationofcatholicpriests.ie
• Image: The Marist Messenger

"I stood there in the Church and didn't know what to do. I was listening to this lament in a very public place. I wanted to leave, but then I thought I would be seen to be a perpetrator or outed as a victim. So, I sat down and spent the rest of the Mass angry…," said one man, who wrote to me.

The man says he felt used, adding, "I am so sick of apologies; they are just another form of victimisation."

This is the first of a series of stories I received following my initial piece in CathNews.

A nurse also wrote, recalling that at the end of the Mass, she and the other reader sat with the reader asked to lead the lament—without any preparation—and processed what it all meant.

"A truly professional organisation would have offered support to anyone in the congregation impacted by abuse because you never know who is sitting there and what they are experiencing, but there was nothing."

Another person wrote: "The Sunday Mass is no longer a safe place when I am made guilty of the sins of paedophiles, and church leaders who have not led."

A younger person recounted the experience of being "personally blamed for the crimes that others did in my country" during her grandparent's generation.

"To me, the lament does the same, and I know that others also were upset; I just wonder how those who were abused felt?"

Communications blunder

"They did old-form communications, focusing mainly on content rather than modern messaging that also considers the impact," wrote a communications professional.

Nowadays, there is also more than one channel to deliver a suitable message.

Given that most Catholics no longer regularly attend Sunday Mass, using the Mass as a key communications channel is designed for the village; it is pre-digital and shows that if the bishops receive communication advice, the advisors must up their game.

The response I received to my original piece from clergy has been supportive.

Several wrote expressing their distaste for what they had to do and how they had to do it. Some expressed surprise that no network of support was offered.

Having received the material before Sunday Mass, one priest offered pastoral feedback to his bishop on the content and strategy, but the priest says his advice was not taken.

Other priests also wrote saying they modified the lament or ignored it all together.

Sunday Mass

Sunday Mass is a space where the divine and the human meet, a place beyond the pragmatic.

Understanding the nature of liturgical rites and how they function theologically is the work of liturgical theologians, not a dive into the esoteric.

Using a biblical lament during a Sunday Mass is never appropriate.

Biblical laments are placed within penitential services as part of the healing process.

Accordingly, penitential laments change in their structure, language and purpose according to who is lamenting and what is being lamented:

• I lament that I have done this,
• I lament that others have done this to me,
• We lament that we as a people and nation have done this.

Laments should not be used as a cheap ‘apologetic hocus-pocus'.

It also appears that the bishops' liturgical advisors and theologians must up their game.

Representative or actual guilt and accountability

In making these comments, distinguishing between representative guilt, actual guilt and accountability must be more carefully considered.

How do the current group of bishops, congregational leaders and school leaders/Boards carry the representative guilt and accountability for their predecessors' lapses in moral judgment when they do not carry the actual guilt or personal accountability?

Is it reasonable to project representative guilt or accountability onto the general population with little knowledge of what went on, who have had no part in decision-making and those without agency?

The reality of abuse will be the defining historical term of this period of the Church.

Institutional abuse must be addressed on many levels because it is primarily a human reality; and it is through addressing human needs, decision-making and the human experience of being abused that the institution can find a new way of operating.

An approach to moving forward

In order for everyone to move forward with their lives I'd like to suggest three conversations may be appropriate:

• ask survivors what an authentic act of penance or repentance would look like;
• ask survivors and parishioners what a genuine act of restitution for survivors might look like;
• ask survivors, parishioners, and perpetrators what a healing form of public reconciliation might look like.

In these conversations, a synodal approach to the reality of abuse might uncover and communicate more than an apology ever can.

Importantly, these conversations must not be forced on survivors, Sunday Mass-goers, or perpetrators; they should not be seen as conversations that solve the problem so everyone can move on.

Healing

The function of the Royal Commission was to listen, judge, and act by making recommendations. The Royal Commission helps by exposing issues but cannot heal because it is a legal instrument, not a theological one.

Similarly, political reform will only change the functions around abuse prevention, not abuse's ontology.

In contrast, the Christian Church possesses the tools to address abuse beyond legality and functional prevention, and the Church must offer more than a change in the management of abuse prevention.

The Church must forge new pathways to healing and reconciliation by applying the theological truths of faith, hope, and love through our sacramental system and the mercy of the Gospel.

The way forward for Christians is ultimately theological and liturgical because that is how we frame and understand salvation, life, death, meaning and purpose.

Similarly, a radical (from the roots) reform of the exercise of authority in the church needs to be addressed theologically if the experience and complexity of institutional abuse are to be transformative of institutional leadership.

• Dr Joe Grayland is an assistant lecturer in the Department of Liturgy at the University of Wuerzburg (Germany). He has also been a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Palmerston North (New Zealand) for more than 30 years.

In a letter that needed to be short, it is hard to know what language the bishops could have used to make their apology more comprehensive than it is.

Certainly, the apology needed to acknowledge, above all, Church leaders' own failures for inadequate handling of offenders and inadequate support for victims/survivors.

But as leaders, it also fell to them to apologise, as far as possible, for all offending within the Church.

In their own way, I think the bishops were trying to do all this, while acknowledging that "words alone can never replace what was stolen and can never fully restore that which was destroyed."

Responsibility and abuse

But when Joe claims that the bishops fail to take "full responsibility" he seems to mean "sole responsibility," because he says that, "through the apology and the lament", Sunday congregations were being "co-opted into sharing responsibility for their leaders' actions" and called to "become complicit in the leaders' sins".

Surely, the apology needed to encompass the failures of bishops, priests, religious and laity, because anything less would not have respected what victims/survivors have been telling us.

Joe's claim that using the occasion of a Sunday Mass was itself "a subtle form of abuse", and that it had "no rightful place in the Sunday liturgy" is surely unrealistic.

Real life

This was not the time for esoteric distinctions between laments, symbols of shame, public and private repentance, etc. Liturgy has to be incarnate in real life!

Real life includes: the right of victims/survivors and the Catholic people to hear the apology as directly as possible and not just via public media.

In real life, the time when most Catholics gather is at Sunday Masses. In the course of every year, special causes are occasionally featured without prejudice to the Sunday's primary meaning.

In real life, a letter that needs to be short is never going to say everything that everybody wants it to say.

And in real life, most sexual offending occurs in homes or among relatives, and most vocations to priesthood and religious life come from homes. The apology and the lament were an occasion for all of us.

I think our congregations would have been pleased to hear the bishops' apology, and appreciated the opportunity to participate in a form of communal lament, and would have recognised the need for it to be on a Sunday.

• Copy supplied
• Bishop Peter Cullinane (pictured) is Bishop Emeritus, Diocese of Palmerston North.

Yet others have partially removed themselves from in-house discussion by opting for a "spirituality" more or less independent of the Church.

Confusions that come to us from the wider secular culture are another matter again.

Some of the polarisations within the Church can be described as "push-back."

It is important to understand the reasons for push-back - from whichever direction it comes.

It needs to be made fruitful. Otherwise, it just degenerates into culture wars. These have already reached fever pitch in some parts of the world. We don't need that.

But, first the good news: the common ground between polarised positions within the Church is that people's faith really matters to them.

Perhaps we should be more concerned about those who seem not to notice.

Above all, however, small family arguments should not be given more time than we give to reaching out to people in need and working to transform society.

Push-backs and pendulum swings

Some of today's push-backs are residue from previous pendulum swings.

In its day, feudal society had found an echo in the Church, some of the bishops being princes and lords.

That kind of society is what the French Revolution pushed back against by calling for liberty, equality and fraternity - and by persecution.

Persecution rebounded in the form of many new religious orders, expanded missionary work, and a revival movement, which was known as Ultramontanism because it was centred on Rome ("over the mountains" from northern Europe.)

Features of this revival included parish missions and multiple devotions, processions, apparitions, miracles, pilgrimages, scapulas, medals, and novenas - which have their place, though not as bargain for salvation.

It is the era of neo-Gothic and baroque architecture, and exuberant adornment of churches. Clergy became a group apart even more, and later, with dress to match.

The First Vatican Council (1869-70) was the first to which no lay people were invited.

The era featured a theology that became increasingly unable to address modern questions, culminating in the anti-Modernism of Popes Pius IX and X.

Intellectual enquiry was not encouraged, and complete subordination to Church authority, especially the Pope's, was the order of the day.

With some variations, this gave us our experience of Catholicism up until the 1960's.

The much-needed corrective came with ressourcement: better methods of studying the ancient scriptures, and the liturgies, theologies and practices of Christianity's earlier centuries, gradually emerged, and fed into the renewal mandated by the Second Vatican Council.

Some of today's push-back is a hankering for features of Ultramontanism; and some of those features are mistaken for "tradition."

Different experiences

Push-back can also arise from different generations' experience.

Some of us grew up within a Church that was controlling, paternalistic, clericalist and conformist.

The post-Vatican II Church included push-back against that way of being Church. There were good reasons for this - based on what it means to be a person and what it means to fully respect the primacy of conscience:

The dignity of the human person is a concern of which people of our time are becoming increasingly more aware.

In growing numbers people demand that they should enjoy the use of their own responsible judgment and freedom.

They want to decide on their actions on grounds of duty and conscience, without external pressure or coercion. (On Religious Liberty -Dignitatis Humanae, n.1.)

A true appreciation of personhood and of conscience fosters personal responsibility in others. It relies more on catechesis and moral formation than on regulation and penalties.

It is more akin to authorising or enabling others to grow as persons. It requires a formation aimed at helping them to understand the issues and to choose well.

It moves away from social patterns and leadership styles that were more typical of feudal societies, and that prolonged over-dependence and personal immaturity.

This accounts for different expectations of how Church leadership should be exercised.

There has been push-back from some who fear that respect for the autonomy of persons and the primacy of conscience involves a failure to uphold church teachings.

Those who grew up since the 1960's have not experienced a highly authoritarian and conformist way of being Church.

But they have experienced the emptiness of secular ideology and the triteness of consumerism, and they are pushing back against that.

They rightly look to the Church for a strong sense of the transcendent and clear markers against false ideologies, and are concerned when it seems to them that the liturgy renewal involves a diminished sense of mystery and of the transcendent.

From ceremony to ritual

Conversely, of course, some of their efforts to emphasise transcendence can seem to others like an over-emphasis on secondary matters and externals.

After all, even the Church's teachings do not all have the same level of importance:

The "... biggest problem is when the message we preach seems identified with secondary aspects which important as they are, do not in and of themselves convey the heart of Christ's message…" (Pope Francis, The Joy of the Gospel, n.34)

That applies also to Church practices. In his scholarly article, One Hundred Years of the Discipline of the Liturgy (Australasian Catholic Record, Oct 2023), Gerard Moore reminds us of the difference between "ceremony" and "ritual".

We watch a ceremony, and we participate in a ritual (acknowledging some overlap).

Before the Second Vatican Council, it was assumed that the congregation "attended" Mass, which the priest "celebrated."

It was the priest's responsibility to ensure the ceremony was correctly performed, and there were manuals that spelled that out in much detail.

It easily became a preoccupation with rubrics, vestments, birettas, mitres, candles etc.

But the Council reminded us that the Mass is not a ceremony which the congregation attends, it is a ritual in which they participate.

Although the priest has a special ministry, it is the whole congregation that celebrates Eucharist.

There are also polarised expectations resulting from how we think of "mystery" and "reverence."

The confusion derives from pre-Council times when we did not have a good understanding of the difference between "devotions" and "liturgy" - they were all "what we did in church."

Our understanding of "reverence" derived mainly from our demeanour before the Blessed Sacrament.

That kind of reverence, proper to Eucharistic devotions, can inhibit the sense of mystery and of reverence that properly belong to liturgy.

(That is why official sources prefer the reserved Sacrament to have its own sacred space, apart from the sanctuary. It is not part of the liturgy of the Mass.)

In liturgy, properly understood, the "mystery" is indeed Christ's real presence, and "reverence" is the way we respond to what He is doing for us, which is different in each of the sacraments and at different moments in the celebration of Eucharist.

An example might help:

For Polynesian Catholics, the Gospel procession involves song, dance and expressions of joy at Christ's coming among us in his word, and the congregation rises to its feet out of respect.

When I explained this to a group of seminarians, one commented that this could be "a distraction."

That good man was still thinking of the kind of reverence we express in the presence of the reserved Sacrament and in private prayer.

The Gospel procession invites us to come out of our private time to join a worshipping community - to participate in a ritual.

Intrusions

Where the difference between devotions and liturgy has not yet been well understood, efforts are still being made to re-insert various devotions into the liturgy, and objects of devotion into the sanctuary.

But nothing is more striking than the "noble simplicity" of which the Introduction to the Roman Missal speaks.

There have been sporadic efforts to re-introduce the maniple, the biretta, etc, but these are more usual with fringe groups, which tells its own story.

Good ritual doesn't need things that have lost their meaning.

For example: when the priest had his back to the congregation and prayed the Eucharistic Prayer quietly, in Latin, the people had no way of knowing where he was up to. And so, a bell was rung at various stages of the Mass to help the people know.

The current rubric allows that a small bell may be rung "if appropriate," "as a signal to the faithful" (it has no other meaning) - e.g. in a large congregation where it may be difficult for people to see or hear.

But in a small building, where the people are carefully following the prayer which they can hear clearly, the sudden interruption of a bell can be quite a distraction.

Some ways of not causing distraction during the Eucharistic Prayer seem to be little more than common courtesies.

But many of them come back to the fact that one voice prayerfully proclaiming the Eucharistic Prayer helps the prayerful participation of the people, and so the less shuffling around at the altar the better.

This led priests and bishops, some years ago, to forgo options that are open to them, sharing different parts of the Eucharistic Prayer among the concelebrants, all concelebrants saying the words of institution out loud, bishops putting mitres off and on during the Mass…

Forgoing such options occurs naturally to those who think of the congregation's needs more than their own prerogatives.

Same signs, different meanings

Of course, "secondary things" and "externals" are often intended to point beyond themselves.

Signs are a kind of language. Clerical dress is an example of this, and of a recent push-back. Dress can be a sign of being different, separate, apart.

Alternatively, it can indicate closeness to people, being one with them.

What counts is not what our signs means to ourselves, but what they mean to those we want to communicate with.

Up-to-date research by the Wilberforce Foundation (Faith and Belief, 2023) confirms that it is not status or position that attracts New Zealanders to explore the faith:

People living in Aotearoa New Zealand value authenticity with 66 percent of respondents being attracted to explore spirituality if they see people living out a genuine faith or spirituality first-hand.

"Authenticity around faith and spirituality in conversations is … a key factor in leading individuals to consider faith or spiritual matters…" (p.28)

Then, more pointedly, it says: "the number one repellent to exploring faith and spirituality" was hearing it from people who publicly and officially represent it.

The reasons for this might not be recent scandals, because the Wilberforce Study goes on to say that:

… the above finding does not hold for the younger generation, who are more open to influencers. Gen Z are the most likely generation to investigate faith or spirituality if they hear it from a representative public figure…

Gen Z are also the most likely to be attracted to exploring spirituality further because of stories or testimonies from people who have changed because of their faith or spirituality… (p 28).

So, perhaps the research is saying, as many Catholics do, that ministry is not helped by regalia, customs or titles that symbolise power - the remnants of Christendom.

Adaptation to pastoral need goes with being incarnational - being not of the world, but truly in it nevertheless - not just physically, but also socially.

In 1971, the International Theological Commission had warned against "the tendency to form a separate caste".

I have been struck by the coincidence of two unrelated events: in order not to re-traumatise victims, the NZ bishops knew better than to wear clericals when they came before the Royal Commission.

Nearly fifty years earlier, one of our most pastorally dedicated priests had been visiting a hospital, and he told the nurse that a patient he visited had seemed agitated.

She told him that the monitoring machines often showed a rise in blood pressure and pulse rates when "you men come in dressed in deep black".

After that he was always smartly dressed and identifiable as a priest, but never again in "deep black."

We need to be sensitive to these matters because how we come across is meant to be for the benefit of others and not just to satisfy some inner need of our own.

Throughout the Church, pastoral savvy has resulted in many different forms of clerical dress.

It's the mission that doesn't change.

Some push-back on this account comes out of a pious exaggeration relating to ordination which led Pope St John Paul II to remind us that "what one becomes through ordination is in the realm of function, not dignity or holiness" (Christi Fideles Laici, 51).

It is the function that is special.

The importance of belonging

Our "small family arguments" do not cancel our belonging. They take place within the context of family bonds that go deeper than differences.

There is a Catholic culture formed through the inter-action the Church's scriptures, liturgies, devotions, hymns, literature, art, pilgrimages, parishes, Religious communities, schools, work for justice, peace, development and health care, personal sacrifices, faithfulness…

Within this culture, the desire to belong is mysteriously stronger than anything that offends.

But I could be accused of avoiding the more serious issues if I omitted to acknowledge the kind of differences that can threaten unity within the Church.

At one level, the continued use of the unrevised Missal might seem harmless enough - live and let live.

But it can also smudge reality: a General Council of the Church mandated a revision of the Missal, and every Pope since has emphasised that continued use of the unrevised Missal is a special concession for specific pastoral needs.

In other words, the revised and unrevised Missals are not just alternative, ordinary, ways of celebrating Mass.

What matters here is not just the difference between two Missals; it is our Catholic practice of accepting the mandate of a General Council, and its endorsement by all subsequent Popes.

There is no point in blaming Pope Francis: he is the one charged by the Holy Spirit to preside over the unity of the Church.

Fortunately, he can be unfazed by small family arguments, but he is also clear about the boundaries of unity. Our prayers for him need to be accompanied by our loyalty.

• Peter Cullinane is Emeritus Bishop of Palmerston North, New Zealand and a respected writer and retreat leader who, in his retirement, is still busy at the local, national, and international levels.

We can also sympathise with good and decent people who have become victims of a culture that is not given to thinking deeply, is impressionistic and easily led.

Contributing factors to this culture include the pressing demands of family life and work, leaving little time for careful reading, reflection and processing information; bombardment by head-lines and sound-bites that can diminish people's ability to concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time; the gradual dumbing down that comes from relentless light entertainment and trivialisation.

In this context, it is easy to be carried along by second-hand opinions, superficial impressions and misinformation.

This is the context in which people can talk about abortion as if it didn't involve the taking of a life.

In our country, we have even passed legislation based on that assumption.

It has been a long time since the sciences established that the embryo is human life in its own right, not just a part of its mother's body - already her child's body!

On top of the pressures already mentioned, people's sympathies are more easily directed towards the people they see than to the embryos they don't see, and "what the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over."

However, that is not quite true: the reality of post-abortion trauma suggests there was at least an oblique awareness that a child was involved.

This unthinking and non-scientific culture is also a problem and closer to the problem I am addressing.

A sharp incongruity

But there is a deeper problem, involving views that are doctrinaire and even anti-scientific.

It involves the highly politicised and much-publicised clamour for a so-called right to choose abortion for whatever reason, even just personal convenience.

There is dramatic incongruity in the fact that people who have the most to say about an individual's "right to choose" never seem even to mention those who are most affected by abortion - the ones whose lives are being terminated (whether by dismemberment or by medication).

The silence is as stunning as the clamour.

• Is this incongruity due to simple ignorance of well-established scientific data?
• Or is it due to wilful ignorance, through fear of what the truth might be?
• Or, something deeper still and more dangerous?

I make no judgement of the people involved. But the incongruity they are caught up in involves denial, which is never healthy: and that is the subject of this article.

The individual's "right to choose" has become a kind of stand-alone value, so absolute that it trumps every other consideration.

The act of choosing means more than what is chosen.

According to a statement by the U.S. Supreme Court, "at the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life".

So

• Where does this cult-like status of the individual's freedom come from?
• Can choice make something right regardless of all else?
• Does the democratic majority override the need to enquire any further?
• How come public service media feel entitled to give "pro-choice" such one-sided publicity?

The incongruity is rooted in an understanding of freedom that goes back a long way.

A main achievement of classical liberalism was its vindication of the rights, equality and freedom of individuals, over against the authoritarianism, class privilege and obscurantism of earlier times.

This required restricting the role of the State to maximising the conditions that enable individuals, with all their diversity, to live together with dignity, equality and freedom. (This now includes allowing for subsidiarity, partnerships and ‘power sharing'.)

Less positive consequences arose when the status of individuals came to be expanded in far-reaching ways - to meet social, cultural and economic interests. Both right-wing and left-wing movements would expand the status of the individual beyond that promoted by the Enlightenment.

Francis Fukuyama traces these developments further back to Jean-Jacque Rousseau for whom autonomy meant the recovery of one's authentic inner self by escape from the social rules that imprisoned it; (Liberalism and its Discontents; Profile Books 2022, p. 51).

Right-wing movements pushed the rights of individuals in favour of greater market freedom. State regulations, social welfare legislation and the redistribution of wealth were not in their interests.

They still push in the direction of unregulated markets and unregulated exploitation of resources, regardless of the inequalities that this causes. Not to mention the highly developed techniques for brainwashing developed by right-wing media in USA - and their success in generating doubt, fear, falsehood and anger.

Left-wing movements pushed in the direction of ever-expanding claims for personal autonomy and self-actualisation over against various social norms and traditions.

They, too, resent legislation that restricts personal choice and freedom.

For some, self-actualisation repudiates anything that appears to limit that ‘inner self' Rousseau spoke of. E.g."The gender paradigm sees "truth" and "reality" as exercises of social power. Our bodies are blank slates; they do not carry any intrinsic meaning, and we should use technology to overcome any supposedly "natural" limits that impinge on our autonomy". (Prof. Abigail Favale PhD, Interview in The Catholic World Report, July 12, 2022).

Favale's critique obviously refers to the ideology of gender fluidity, with its gratuitous spurning of any ‘natural limits' - using technology/medication if necessary to remove them.

This would make sexual identity and gender identity simply matters of personal choice.

But the critique applies also to the question being addressed here: abortion - at any stage of pregnancy - comes to be thought of only as the means we use to remove an obstacle to complete personal freedom.

Further, if personal freedom is the basis of a person's rights and personal worth, this is bad news for those whose ability to exercise their freedom is still developing or diminished by age or illness.

Alas, however, freedom that is not bound by "truth" or "reality" or any of the order inherent in nature is ultimately freedom for make-believe - because the world is not like that.

"Human beings are not free-floating agents capable of reshaping themselves in any way they choose; this only happens in online virtual worlds…

"Our experience of the world is increasingly mediated by screens that allow us to easily imagine ourselves in alternative realities or as alternative beings. …

"The real world, however, continues to be different: wills are embedded in physical bodies that structure and also limit the extent of individual agency…" (Fukuyama, 153)

In other words, our true self is not some inner self waiting to be liberated from every requirement of nature or society; our true self is our whole self in right relationships with all else.

Not the heirs of classical liberalism

The liberal agenda benefits us all where it fosters the development of personal responsibility, moving away from social patterns and leadership styles that were more typical of feudal societies and that prolonged over-dependence on others.

The problem is with the excesses and exaggerations of individualism.

The further these movements slip away from reality into the realms of subjectivism, the more they begin to look like a return to the obscurantism that classical liberalism would have spared us by its respect for the reality of an objective world, the importance of scientific method, and acknowledgement of objective truth and knowledge.

To regard objective reality and truth as "exercises of social power" which inhibit one's "inner self" implies willingness to accept unreality and untruth.

And so, the difference between right and wrong becomes just a matter of public opinion.

In debate with Abraham Lincoln, Stephen Douglas argued for the primacy of democratic choice over whatever the choice led to. Lincoln's response was that there were more important principles at stake than democracy, namely the premise that "all are created equal" - and on that premise, slavery was wrong, whatever about any democratic majority; (Fukuyama, p. 123). (President Biden could learn from his predecessor.)

Classical liberalism was right to affirm the rights, equality and freedom of individuals. But, ironically, it is precisely these values that are put in jeopardy by exaggerated claims made in the name of individual rights and personal autonomy. All the more because, unlike classical liberalism, which promoted tolerance, the more extreme left and right-wing ideologies have become intolerant, even aggressive, in pursuing the interests of the self.

Of course, if there is no meaning to life and the universe beyond what the individual decides to make of it, then there is no point in talking about a common good to which the individual has any obligation.

Right-wing movements need to learn that "if economic freedom to buy, sell, and invest is a good thing, that does not mean that removing all constraints from economic activity will be even better." (p. 154).

The left needs to learn that "if personal autonomy is the source of an individual's fulfilment, that does not mean that unlimited freedom and the constant disrupting of constraints will make a person more fulfilled." (p. 154)

The pursuit of exaggerated claims has been facilitated by the widespread assumption that what we can do with nature, we may do.

However, perhaps that kind of thinking has had its hour.

A new ecological awareness cogently reminds us that there are purposes built into nature, including human nature, that cannot be ignored with impunity; that everything is connected, and that there is still a difference between using nature and abusing it.

And in real life, there are life-giving ways of relating and caring that completely transcend individualism's narrow horizons.

• Peter Cullinane was the first bishop of the Diocese of Palmerston North. Now he is "finding retirement more like being re-cycled."

Dr Joe Grayland makes the comment in a comment and analysis piece in today's CathNews.

The National synodal synthesis calls for "liturgical language that is welcoming, inclusive, less misogynistic, and hierarchical, and more consonant with contemporary theology, language that includes, builds up, heals wounds and affirms."

The synthesis describes the language of the current translation of the Roman Missal as "flat".

It's a point not lost on New Zealand's bishops.

In a 2015 letter to The Tablet, theologian and Emeritus Bishop of Palmerston North called for an overhaul of the English missal.

He called it "clunky, awkward and a too literal translation of the Latin original".

However, writing in today's CathNews, Grayland says recent changes by Pope Francis mean the ball is in the NZ Bishops' court; that changing the language in the Roman Missal is already possible.

"Synodal feedback calls for reworking the current Roman Missal to provide better, more straightforward and accessible liturgical language. Sadly, this request reads as if this change were not already possible," Grayland writes.

He says that straightforward and accessible liturgical language has been available since Pope Francis published Magnum Principium (The Great Principle).

He says the Pope has already given individual Bishops' conferences permission to work on and issue modifications to liturgical texts.

"In Magnum Principium, Francis shifted the responsibility and the authority for translating liturgical texts to the episcopal conferences by modifying clauses two and three of canon 838 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law.

"He also redefined and limited the role of the then Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, now the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments," writes Grayland.

Asked if he found it strange that the NZ Bishops would make a synodal recommendation when they already have the delegated authority to act, Grayland says that it is important to see the recommendation in the context of a whole New Zealand church synodal response.

However, he says Pope Francis has put the onus on local bishops.

Grayland says this work can be done only by a team of professional liturgical theologians and assisted by other professionals and the work will probably not be undertaken without these resources because New Zealand is such a small country.

In the meantime, Grayland suggests the NZ Bishops' conference permit using the ICEL 1998 "presidential prayers and propers".

He says it will bring a higher standard of written and proclamatory English into the Mass and other sacraments again.

In light of Pope Francis' Magnum Principium and that priests, unhappy with the new literal translation, the NZ Catholic Bishops Conference asked ICEL in 2017 to review its 1998 draft Roman Missal translation.

The then President of the NZ Bishops' conference, Patrick Dunn, said the New Zealand bishops acknowledged they could work independently but, for the sake of unity, were not inclined to.

Liturgical misunderstandings and superficiality develops Part I: Like charity, Christian unity begins at home.

Wasn't the Traditional Latin Mass the "Mass of the ages"?

Yes, which is why it adapts to different ages. We have only to read St Justin's beautiful description of the Mass dating from c. 155 AD to realise that the form of the Mass does change. The Mass St Justin knew would eventually live on in the revised Missal Pope Pius V promulgated after the Council of Trent; (the "Traditional Latin Mass"). And that Mass now lives on in the revised Missal promulgated by Pope Paul VI after the Second Vatican Council. Both Missals have resulted from revisions of previous texts. That is the sense in which we can speak of "the Mass of the ages". And that is the sense in which Tradition lives on even as small traditions come and go.

Was the 1962 Missal "abrogated"?

No, but that only means it was not annulled, and so it can still be validly used when the Pope authorises it to meet special needs. It was withdrawn from normal use. Pope Paul VI made it clear that the revised form of the Missal replaced the unrevised form.

Why did the Second Vatican Council require the Missal to be revised?

Historical research contributed to the reform which gave us the "Traditional Latin Mass". Likewise, the Second Vatican Council's reform had at its disposal up-dated scholarship based on ancient Christian sources even more recently discovered.

According to Pope Paul VI, the Council intended

1. to make it easier for people to see the meaning of the various parts of the Mass and the connection between them, and easier for people to participate;
2. open up the scriptures more abundantly; and
3. restore elements of the Mass which, through the accidents of history, had become obscured. (For example: reflecting the influence of Jansenism, the unrevised Missal still instructs the priest what to do if anyone wants to receive Holy Communion; whereas reflecting the later influence of Pope St Pius X, the revised Missal expects that most of the congregation will be receiving Holy Communion.)

The Council taught that "full, conscious and active participation in the liturgical celebrations is required by the very nature of the liturgy" (Liturgy 14)

Who celebrates the Mass?

Our previous formation left many of us with the impression that the priest celebrated the Mass and the rest of us "attended" Mass. People adjusted to this understanding, so that while the priest prayed the prayers of the Mass, they often filled in the time with their own prayers. The reality, however, is that Mass is celebrated by the whole congregation (cf Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1140). That is why it requires their "full, conscious and active participation", whether by word, song, gesture, or stillness and deep silence - but acting as "one body, one spirit in Christ". The way we participate is not determined by "personal preference," (which is what contempo0rary secular culture emphasises.)

The priest's role is still special: he does not act on Christ's behalf because it is Christ himself who acts - through the priest who has been ordained to act in his Person. But this does not make him the only "celebrant". According to the prayers of the Mass itself, "offerimus" i.e. "we offer".

Reverence

Reverence is body-language par excellence. It is the demeanour that comes naturally when we are aware of being in God's presence. But there are different ways of being in God's presence, and different expressions of reverence. For example, the reverence proper at a grave-side; the reverence proper to adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, etc. Each is important in its own circumstances.

The kind of reverence proper to liturgy corresponds to the ways Christ is really present. According to the Council (Liturgy, 7), Christ is present

• in the congregation ("where two or three are gathered…");
• in the word (where "Christ is speaking to his people" - present tense);
• in the ministry of those ordained to act in the name of Christ;
• and especially in the Sacrament.

These four different manifestations of Christ's real presence invite different ways of responding. The appropriate way of responding to each is the appropriate way of being reverent.

And so, for example: how we respond to Christ present in his word is different from how we respond to his presence in the Sacrament, and how we acknowledge His presence in the gathering. Greeting one another before Mass begins, followed by a period of silence, helps to form the community that is about to worship as one body. The way we relate to people who have "gathered in his name" is different from the ways we relate to people who have gathered for social occasions.

To require only one way of being reverent (e.g. the reverence due to the Blessed Sacrament), excluding the others, is against the nature of the liturgy.

Posture

In the liturgy, postures and gestures are statements of faith. They are ways of saying - with our whole self - what we believe and what we are doing. They em-body and en-act our inner dispositions, and deepen them. That is why we don't just ‘do' them; we need to really mean them - make them mean what our minds and hearts want to say. They also enable the congregation to act as one body.

For example: the presence of Christ is beautifully acknowledged when the book of the Gospels, symbolising Christ, is brought into the assembly, accompanied by song (and in some cultures, dance), and the congregation rises to its feet.

The custom of kneeling during the Eucharistic Prayer is regarded as "laudable". But it is important to understand the early Christians' practice of standing. Eucharistic Prayer I, originating around the year 375, refers to the congregation "standing around" ("circum-stantes" - currently translated as "gathered here"). The even older Eucharistic Prayer II, originating around the year 215, refers to our being counted "worthy to stand in Your presence" (currently mistranslated as "being in Your presence").

At Benediction, we are adoring Christ, for which the appropriate body-language is "down in adoration falling…" That is not mainly what we are doing during the Eucharistic Prayer. The Eucharistic Prayer is addressed almost entirely to the Father. The appropriate body-language is that which best corresponds with what the Eucharistic Prayer is saying. For those early Christians, standing was body-language for acknowledging that in Christ we have been raised up.

That is why St John Chrysostom forbade his people to kneel during the Easter season; so did St Augustine. The Council of Nicea forbade kneeling for prayer on Sundays; and when in the 9th century kneeling became more common, it was only on non-festive days, never on days that commemorate the resurrection of Jesus, i.e. Sundays and feast-days. Standing is still the posture in the Eastern Churches.

Mission

In the celebration of Eucharist, the Holy Spirit makes present to us what God is doing for our salvation (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1091 ff). We allow ourselves to be taken up into it, with wonder and thanksgiving.

We are being sanctified and sent - two sides of the same coin. Our participation in the Mass is incomplete if it does not flow out into every aspect of life, making it more authentically human - through social and economic justice, and responsibility for the planet. "The split between the faith which many profess and their daily lives deserves to be counted among the more serious errors of our age" (2nd Vat. Council Church in Modern World, 43.)

The connection between our sanctification and our mission is illustrated in our reception of Holy Communion. "We become what we receive" (St Augustine). What we receive is ‘the body broken and given up for others' and the ‘blood (life) poured out for others'. Being "for others" is what we commit ourselves to when we respond "Amen".

‘Meal' and ‘sacrifice' are not conflicting concepts: "… every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, you are proclaiming his death" (1 Cor. 11:26). Nor are ‘altar' and ‘table' conflicting concepts, as the table shape of the altar in meant to remind us.

Hand or tongue?

During times of infection, hygiene aimed at preventing the spread of potentially fatal infections is a matter of moral duty towards ourselves and others. In normal times, our practice should be based on Jesus' own words at the Last Supper: "take, eat… take, drink". It is based on the normal ways that adults take food and drink. But we receive it with deep awareness of who it is we are receiving. (Placing food on another's tongue is more normally what we do for infants and disabled people.)

Homily or sermon?

The scriptures give us a backdrop against which to notice how God has been involved in other people's lives. The homily is intended to help us recognise how God is still involved - now in our lives. It is specifically about what God is doing. A sermon is more about what we should be doing. Of course, we also need to know that, but not all our learning can be loaded on to the homily. Catholics are supposed to participate in other forms of on-going formation.

Constant moralising can lead to over-anxiety for people already harassed by the struggles of living, and can weigh them down. In contrast to this, noticing what God is doing in the midst of our struggles lifts us up. Contemplating God's love for us evokes our love for God.

Adaptations

There is a difference between aberrations and adaptations. Changes that deflect from the meaning of a given part of the Mass are aberrations and not acceptable. However, adaptations that better bring out its meaning actually help to fulfil the purpose intended by the rubrics. We fulfil the whole law by fulfilling its purpose; (Mark 2:23-27)

The General Instruction of the Roman Missal requires that "accommodations and adaptations" should "correspond to the meaning and character of each part of the celebration". Some adaptations require decision by the bishop, or Bishops' Conference. Smaller ones are made by the priest so that the prayer of the Church can become the prayer of the people who are present. In this way he is being faithful to his duty:

"…the age and condition of the people, their way of life, and degree of religious culture (i..e. religious formation, faith-practice etc) should be taken into account. By doing so, pastors will be fulfilling one of the chief duties of a faithful dispenser of the mysteries of God…" (Constitution on the Liturgy, 19)

‘…always to be kept in mind is the preservation of that freedom, envisaged by the new rubrics, to adapt the celebration in an intelligent manner to the church building, or to the group of faithful who are present, or to particular pastoral circumstances in such a way that the universal rite is truly accommodated to human understanding. (Consilium for Promoting the Constitution on the Liturgy, Notitiae, 1965, p 254).

Making these kinds of adaptations should be as natural as the way we adapt our vocabulary when speaking now to adults, now to children. Changing non-inclusive to inclusive language is a case in point.

Church architecture & furnishings

These are meant to help us be aware of Christ's presence in the four ways he is present: in the sacrament - altar; in the word - table of the word; in the ministry of the priest - presider's chair; and in the congregation - seating arrangements.

Other furnishings and statues help to create an atmosphere, but must not distract us from the liturgy itself. The tabernacle and reserved Sacrament are not part of the Mass. This is why the Church's preference is for the tabernacle to be located in a separate space within the church, suitable for the devotion due to the Blessed Sacrament, and apart from spaces that are used for other activities, such as marriages; (Instruction on the Eucharistic Mystery, 1967, n 53).

• Peter Cullinane was the first bishop of the Diocese of Palmerston North. Now he is "finding retirement more like being re-cycled."
• This is Part II of a two-part piece. Part I was published previously in CathNews.

If this same Jesus is now "Christ among you, …" (Col.1:27), then people's experience of Christian lives, Christian community and Christian worship should have the same effect. And it does, as many have testified. But it doesn't when we obscure his presence, even just by carelessness.

In fact, whether people would even recognise him as the one sent by the Father depends on us: "Father… may they be one in us, as you are in me and I am in you, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me" (Jn 17:21).

Unity matters that much. And that is what we put in jeopardy by disunity. That is also why Pope Francis' Decree Traditionis Custodes matters so much.

I can understand why some would ask: why would Pope Francis withdraw permission to use the 1962 Missal which means so much to a small community of devout people who are not seeking disunity…? And, why can't the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) and the revised Missal (Novus Ordo) simply co-exist in the same way that the Church allows various rites to co-exist…?

I am sure there some adherents of the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) who think of the TLM as a kind of harmless pluralism. Perhaps this even accounts for a go-slow response by some bishops, hoping it might not be necessary to upset people who are finding comfort in this expression of their faith. But there is an element of wishing thinking here. The situation is more serious than that, both overseas and in Aotearoa NZ.

Papal Intervention

Pope Francis' Decree Traditionis Custodes called for an end to division within the Catholic community's worship.

When Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI allowed, under certain conditions, Mass to be celebrated according to the 1962 Missal, it was - in both cases - regarded as a concession to special needs, not a turning back from the liturgy reform. To emphasise the point, Pope Benedict even called it an extra-ordinary way of celebrating the Roman rite - not on a par with the ordinary form. The Council had serious reasons for renewing the liturgy. It would have contradicted its own intentions if it had intended the existence of a revised Missal and an unrevised Missal "in parallel," as if the renewal were merely optional.

Contrary to the explicit intentions of both these Popes, some have not wanted to accept that these provisions were special "concessions". They have treated the extraordinary form as another ordinary form of the Roman rite. Some even claim that Mass according to the 1962 Missal is the only truly Catholic form of the Mass.

Further, the 1962 Missal has become a flagship for wider dissent, including an un-Catholic disregard for the Council itself, even claiming it betrayed Tradition and the "true Church" - a Council that has been explicitly endorsed by every Pope since. Those of us who have tried to explain the reasons for Pope Francis' Decree have been met by hard-line opposition and very dismissive attitudes, not to mention derogatory attitudes towards Pope Francis himself, and disregard for his role. In many cases, the protagonists (both lay and ordained) are taking their cue from websites emanating from the USA. Division and confusion are the hall-marks of a different spirit, not the Holy Spirit.

What eventually confronted Pope Francis was serious and increasing division. As the one whose core ministry is to preside over the unity of the Church, he could not ignore this. Nor can the college of bishops that shares responsibility with him for the universal Church. In implementing his Decree, bishops are asked "to proceed in such a way as to return to a unitary form of celebration…" A ‘hands-off' attitude is not consistent with what he expects of bishops. Delay in carrying out Pope Francis' decree is not obviating division; it is entrenching it.

A Bigger Challenge

A "bigger challenge" is the need for the wider Catholic community always to celebrate the revised liturgy in a way that allows its true merit and beauty to become evident, and to not scandalise by carelessness. This need is at the heart of Pope Francis' follow-up letter On the Liturgical Formation of the People of God."

It is fair to ask what is it that TLM adherents feel is missing in the revised liturgy. In his Apostolic Constitution promulgating the revised liturgy, Pope Paul VI explained how the revised Missal is the former Missal, in an enriched form.

Similarly, Pope Francis: "whoever wishes to celebrate with devotion according to earlier forms of the liturgy can find in the reformed Roman Missal … all the elements of the Roman rite…". So, is it something else that is missing?

I have listened to the concerns of TLM Catholics, and recognised their love for the Mass and deep need for reverence; their strong attachment to family values; commitment to community, and experience of belonging, and care for one another. They rightly expect reliable leadership, though perhaps are too accepting of clericalism. And they want continuity with tradition, even if not always respecting Pope John Paul II's explanation of the difference between Tradition and mere traditions.

I have also noted the aspirations of the wider Catholic community, much of it recently expressed in the synodal process. In common with TLM Catholics they want an experience of community that is real and caring. They, too, want good leadership, but of a kind that respects Pope Benedict's teaching that lay and ordained are "co-responsible for what the Church is like and what it does." They rightly want closer collaboration, and they understand the need for on-going formation. I see in the aspirations of TLM Catholics and the wider Catholic community underlying common ground, and potential for moving further towards the unity that any Pope is entitled to expect of all of us.

On-going Formation

This brings us to the need for on-going formation. Quite apart from liturgy, there is an obligation on all Catholics to continue their formation in the faith. The General Catechetical Directory promulgated by Pope St John Paul II, points out that on-going catechesis is for adults even more than it is for children. Acceptance of the need for on-going formation should be common ground for all of us. It is a duty for all of us; and it is sign of good faith.

Unfortunately, many Catholics became stuck in a childhood understanding of the faith. Their strong attachment to it echoes deep appreciation of those who handed the faith down to them, and a sense of responsibility for passing it on. For this we must respect them. Anyway, opportunities for adult learning about the faith were not usually available. Nevertheless, a childhood understanding of the faith is incomplete, and insufficient for adult Christian life.

Lack of continued learning results in falling behind. Geographical isolation over time can affect whole societies in this way. Something similar happens to religious movements that keep mainly to themselves. Examples are not hard to find. The reason why monastic communities have not been affected like this is precisely because they do not starve themselves of intellectual formation. They have often been at the forefront of the scholarship that has led to the Church's renewal.

An unintended side-effect of Pope Benedict's more extensive concessions was that TLM adherents felt no need to pursue a deeper understanding of the Council; it seemed that for them nothing had changed. Having put so much work into the Council as a theologian, and having endorsed it as Pope, it is not surprising that Pope Benedict insisted on the need for all Catholics to further their understanding of the Council.

• Peter Cullinane was the first bishop of the Diocese of Palmerston North. Now he is "finding retirement more like being re-cycled."
• This is the first of a two-part piece. Part II, will be published on Monday. It clarifies some of the areas where there is potential for misunderstandings and superficiality.

But nearly 60 years after the Second Vatican Council, have we fully taken on board its teaching that "when the scriptures are proclaimed in the assembly, it is Christ who is speaking to his people" (SC.7).

Would I be looking around for a seat during the readings if I really believed Christ was speaking to me? Wouldn't that stop me in my tracks?

Take heart: the difficulty is partly due to the way the scriptures are presented to us in the Mass - as a set of "readings". They can seem unfamiliar, and not ‘us'.

Even the Gospel comes across as another "reading", about what happened a long time ago.

Presented as ‘readings', the scriptures cannot have the impact on us they are intended to have. People, often parents, tell us that the liturgy of the word isn't "connecting". But we just carry on.

Is there a case for doing things differently?

The first need is for on-going formation concerning how the scriptures speak to us.

They invite us to see how God has been present in other people's lives - in their joys and sorrows, hopes and disappointments.

And because God's ways are not our ways, we learn to expect the unexpected - God turning ordinary human history into salvation history.

Having learned how to notice God's presence in other people's lives, we find it easier to notice how the same God is present in our own lives - salvation history continued. When we see that, we live with a hope that is greater than every set-back.

Noticing how God is present, and making connections, is the work of the Holy Spirit in the hearers of God's word.

But the Spirit is also working through the readers. Readers are not reading a mere record of things said and done in the past, but are fronting a live presentation.

We need to transition from the idea of ‘reading' to the idea of ‘speaking' - "Christ is speaking to his people".

So, it is for the readers to bring the scriptures to life by the way they read - engaging those present and drawing them into the scenes depicted in the readings. It requires of readers a sense of the wonder and the drama of God among us.

However, even the readers' best efforts do not easily engage a congregation. Something else needs to happen for the hearers. There is too big a gap between how the liturgy is meant to function and where many in the congregation are ‘at'.

The need to bridge that gap justifies other ways of drawing people into the scriptures; more personalised ways of learning how to ‘notice' God's presence in the scriptures and in their own lives.

There is a way this could be done, even if only on an interim basis - until people are more practised in knowing what to look for.

So, first a word of assurance to any who might be concerned about seeming departures from the rubrics.

Moral theology and personal moral development come into this. Changes that deflect from the meaning of a given part of the Mass are not acceptable.

But adaptations that better bring out its meaning actually help to fulfil the purpose intended by the rubrics.

At the early stages of our moral development, we depend mainly on the letter of the law because we have not yet grasped its underlying purpose. We gradually grow to understand what the law is intended to achieve.

Whether by following the rubric, or by appropriate adaptation, we fulfil the law by fulfilling its purpose.

We fail to fulfil the law if we obscure or hinder its purpose, even if this is done by rigidly putting the letter of the law above its purpose, its intent, its "spirit".

As for due reverence, there are, of course, different kinds of reverence: eg the reverence proper at a grave-side; the reverence proper to adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, etc.

The kind of reverence proper to liturgy is that which deepens the more we become alive to Christ's real presence - in the congregation ("where two or three are gathered…"); in the word (where "Christ is speaking to his people" - present tense); in the ministry of those ordained to act in the name of Christ; and especially in the Sacrament (Second Vatican Council, SC. 7).

These different manifestations of Christ's real presence invite different ways of responding. The appropriate way of responding is the appropriate way of being reverent.

With these assurances, we can now turn to how we might enable the liturgy of the word to more effectively achieve its purpose.

We encounter Christ in both word and sacrament.

There is a paradigm for this in St Luke's Easter story about the two disciples "on the road" who were "talking about all that had happened" and were down-hearted, (Lk 24:13-35). Then Jesus "drew near" - his presence was real, but seeing him was different now: "something prevented them from recognising him".

Then "He explained the meaning of the scriptures to them."

Later, they would say "were not our hearts burning within us as He talked to us on the road".

But that was after their encounter had deepened: "their eyes were opened and they recognised him…. in the breaking of the bread".

St Luke is telling us that, through word and sacrament, they discovered He was alive and present to them. That is the discovery his disciples today need to make.

Our celebrations of Eucharist bring together word and sacrament: "… as once for his disciples, so now for us, He opens the scriptures and breaks the bread" (Eucharistic Prayer, Various Needs, 4 ).

So how can we make our liturgy of the word more like the discussion on the road in which He drew near and explained, and they knew He was there with them? Somehow, the bigger the congregation the less it feels like that!

How can we make our celebrations of Eucharist more like the experience on the road to Emmaus?

In a post-covid world/Church - and with much-needed liturgy formation - we could slightly re-format the liturgy of the word.

After a short penitential rite and opening prayer to give unity to the gathering, the congregation could turn - with minimal noise and movement - to those around them, (preferably on chairs facing in towards each other) where the scriptures for the day would be quietly and carefully read, prayerfully listened to, reflected on, and applied to our present lives.

After approx. 20 minutes, the small groups would form one group again for the "breaking of the bread", starting with the Creed.

(The rubrics allow omission of the homily for a sufficiently good reason; the need being addressed here give us that reason. We still have readers: on these occasions the readers are many.)

Although this formatting of Sunday Mass is a very minor "change", some Catholics might find it too unfamiliar. It need not be done at every Mass, or It could be done on alternate Sundays.

Importantly, this is not "discussion groups". it is the congregation actively tuning in to the scriptures: after the scripture is read, each individual has the opportunity to name a phrase or sentence that "spoke" to them.

Further comments would be limited to what can be said in less than one minute so that everyone would spend six to ten times more listening than speaking. And when speaking, it is to name how we feel encouraged, or challenged, by the scriptures we have just now heard. Through our personal witness, the word is being echoed.

Pauses for silence are OK! Initial awkwardness would gradually give way to ease.

Many parishes have parishioners who have skills in adult learning processes, group facilitation etc, who could further advise on how to prepare parishioners for this form of breaking open the word.

Even shy parishioners could be encouraged by realising that this way of opening the scriptures makes it easier to relate them to each one's life than can be managed from the lectern. It is a way of actively tuning in that accords with the purpose of the "readings".

The on-going discovery of how Christ is present in our lives doesn't stop with ourselves: "On their arrival (in Antioch), Paul and Barnabas assembled the church and gave an account of all that God had done with them…" (Acts 14:27).

What Paul and Barnabas did in their assemblies is what we would be doing in ours. Sharing how we have known God's presence in our own lives deepens our relationship with one another (builds up the body of Christ); and develops our ability to speak with other people about how to work for a better world (mission).

My hunch is that those Catholics who find Sunday Mass "boring" would be less likely to do so if they discovered Christ the way the disciples on the road to Emmaus discovered him.

Meeting Christ is the experience that changes everything, and without which nothing changes! If we can ‘do' the liturgy of the word better, have we any right not to?

There is an element of inconvenience involved in this suggestion.

So, it is also my hunch that this proposal will be popular with those who want to get more from the liturgy of the word; and unpopular with those who want to get the Mass over.

(To the credit of both, they are present; by definition, liturgy involves community and our own real presence. Virtual presence can help our private devotion, but does not substitute for liturgy.)

In the meantime, it would also help if readers honoured the difference between reading and proclaiming.

The previous English translation taught them to say "This is the word of the Lord" (which could mean, a record of what He has said - past tense).

The current translation requires them, after pausing long enough to get attention, to say: "The word of the Lord!" (i. e. hark! The Lord is saying this to us - present tense).

• Peter Cullinane was the first bishop of the Diocese of Palmerston North. Now retired he continues to be a respected writer and leader of retreats and is still busy at local, national, and international levels.
• Member of the Episcopal Board of ICEL between 1983 and 2003.

This essay is not about them. Rather, it is about those who have an ideological agenda.

Yet, in either case, people who identify as LGBTQ+ are owed the respect that is due to everyone on the basis of being human beings.

So, I ask: is it in their best interests to define themselves by their sexual variations?

There are those who try to persuade us all that gender is only a "social construct"; that it is independent of biological sexuality; that chromosomal variations mean there are more than two sexes; that there are genders in between male and female; that gender can be "fluid" and changeable, etc.

These claims are sometimes made for the well-intentioned purpose of safeguarding the health and well-being of young people experiencing unease or dissatisfaction with their gender (dysphoria), and a praiseworthy desire to assure them that they are OK.

In this sense, at least, these claims are agenda-driven.

But it can also be useful to look to what the human sciences are generally agreed on:

• that some young people do experience dysphoria;
• that this is more often temporary and that after puberty most of them are comfortable identifying with their biological sex;
• that sexual differentiation is reinforced during growing-up years through the experience of male-female socialising; t
• hat a more deep-seated attachment to the same sex is also a reality for some;
• that this can result from genetic and hormonal factors even before birth, or from trauma (sometimes during very early childhood);
• that the first sexual experience can have a deep and lasting impact on one's orientation; that there are other conditions that originate very early - even before birth - including heart defects, spina bifida, Down syndrome, brain damage (due to a mother's drug or alcohol intake), dyslexia, autism, allergies, etc.

It is a blessing that medical science is able to correct some of these, sometimes even while the child is still in the womb.

So, we can acknowledge that some conditions are "on a spectrum", and that some conditions originate from genetic or hormonal variations.

But it is not necessary to affirm that all these conditions are somehow equal in order to assure people they are OK.

People are already OK because their dignity, worth and equality is based on the simple fact of being a human being, not on any other characteristics.

An incident during a visit to the Vatican by the British comedian Stephen Amos illustrates the point: he had been concerned that the Pope might not accept him because he was gay. He said to Pope Francis: "So me coming on this pilgrimage, being non-religious and looking for answers and faith; but as a gay man I don't feel really accepted".

The Pope responded that placing more importance on being gay than on being human was a mistake. "We are all human beings and have dignity. Whoever we are, and however we live, we don't lose our dignity as human beings." Amos said he was "blindsided" by the Pope's response; "and so I was in full respect of the man."

In other words, people are not defined by any of their characteristics or conditions or orientations.

They are first and above all else human beings, and that is the basis of their worth and dignity - not the presence or absence of various conditions.

The real problem derives from society losing sight of this basis of human dignity and equality.

Pre-natal screening is done often with a view to terminating the life of children who have disabilities or defects before they are born.

A society that does that no longer regards the status of being a human being as paramount; it can be overridden by lesser considerations. Such a society robs itself of the very basis on which the absolute equality and worth of every person depends - regardless of other conditions and variations.

Consequently, because the paramount dignity of being human has been eclipsed, and in order to establish the equal dignity and equality of people who happen to the LGBT, activists claim equality for the different sexual and gender variations.

But that agenda can be self-defeating and lead to some very silly claims: e.g. that "all are born perfect" (yeah, right); that binary gender is "an invention of recent years" - (so what were the male and female pronouns referring to all those hundreds of years before that and probably for as long as there has been language?

Do we honour what is properly distinctive of female identity (or male identity), by thinning identity out into something on a spectrum?.

Respectful, intelligent discussion on this is often disrupted by confusion over what is "being judged".

It is not for us to judge other people, but we may, and sometimes must, judge others' actions.

For example, to say that "rape is wrong" is a judgment! Nor is it enough to say that sexual activities only need to be "consensual and safe". After all, that could be true of promiscuity and marriage infidelity.

Sooner or later, we need to look to sexuality's purpose and meaning. This leads us to recognise two purposes that are entwined and come together uniquely in marriage: they are sexuality's potential for deeply nurturing the love of two people and in a way that is also designed to generate new life as the fruit of their love.

And because new life needs to be protected and nurtured, the child's parents need to be in a relationship that is stable, committed and faithful.

Psychologists also speak of children's need to experience both maternal and paternal love.

Removed from its context, sexuality is removed from its meaning, and removed from its meaning, ultimately anything goes.

We need not be naïve about attempts to give sexuality different meanings.

There have been strong, organized and determined cultural movements whose agenda has been to "liberate" sexuality from all previous restraints.

We look back incredulously to the 1960's through 1990's when some activists described themselves as ‘victims' of harsh laws aimed at preventing "man-boy love"; and children as ‘victims' because harsh parents didn't want their children to have that kind of loving care!! "Inter-generational sex" and "man-boy love' were euphemisms intended to make acceptable what society calls pederasty. Even though by the 1990's those movements had mostly lost their credibility, the underlying ideologies have a way of re-surfacing.

Whatever one's sexual orientation or gender, chastity is for the protection of all. Chastity is the virtue that applies self-respect, restraint and respect for others, to sexuality.

Unchastity and self-indulgence can lead to violence - whether inside or outside of marriage - as the expression of unrestrained determination to get what one wants.

Modesty is the virtue that protects chastity. It is an aspect of care and respect for others - which is not at the forefront of people's minds who are concerned mostly about their own rights - real or perceived.

As the basis for affirming the dignity and equality of everyone, there is no substitute for the simple fact of being a human being.

Anything else that one happens to be, or not be, is no match as a basis for affirming the dignity and equality of all.

So, it is the fundamental dignity of being human that needs to be affirmed, and not subordinated to any other consideration.

• Peter Cullinane was the first bishop of the Diocese of Palmerston North. Now retired, he continues to be a respected writer and leader of retreats and is still busy at local, national, and international levels.

You will be the architects of the future.

Amazing science and technology will open doors we haven't even come to yet.

Hopefully, you will always be guided by what it means to be authentically human, which involves more than what science and technology can tell us. In fact, it also helps us to safeguard against the abuse of science and technology.

I am a fan of Professor Brian Cox.

As a former musician with the British bands D:Ream and Dare, and associate of Monty Python's comedy troupe, Cox presumably believes life is to be enjoyed.

He is right.

As professor of particle physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester, and BBC documentary presenter, he clearly finds the universe cause for great wonder.

It's interesting that science and faith both evoke a sense of wonder and awe.

Science is in wonder at what exists, from its smallest details to its greatest dimensions.

No matter how far back scientists look for the universe's origins, science can only wonder at what exists.

Faith is in wonder that anything exists at all, because God didn't need to create.

We need to find ourselves in wonder at what it means to be part of something that might not have existed. "The world will never starve from want of wonders; it will starve from want of wonder." (G.K. Chesterton.)

I find myself both enchanted and challenged by the history of the universe - 13.8 billion years to the first stars; now billions of stars within each galaxy, and trillions of galaxies, and planets formed by the stars; our planet formed from colliding debris over 4.5. billion years, at just the right distance from the sun for life to develop; distances measured in billions of light-years; gravitational forces that could kick planets into different trajectories; the combination of variables that gave us the world that is, instead of all the others that could have been but never will be…!

And planet Earth is microscopic within our solar system, let alone within the wider universe of other galaxies. But it is also special.

The massive transformations that were part of its geo-history led to further transformations in the development of life in its marvellous and complex forms (bio-history).

Last of all, and very late, human life emerged, and what emerges from human freedom - human history. Each of those histories; a reason for unending awe.

Eventually, out of what had been a vast wasteland of rock, volcanos, lava, gases and acidic seas, someone called Beethoven surfaced, who could pull together the sounds that make a symphony.

At the right time, unlikely raw materials had been transformed into a variety of instruments and delicate sounds that would beautifully blend and move together - moving us and drawing us together.

That's a long way from when the first boulders bashed against each other to form a planet capable of this - and every other wonder like it.

But if the past is mind-boggling, it's the future that really challenges me.

Our planet, scientists say, is destined to end up like the other planets - burned out and dead!

Some scientists surmise that by the time planet Earth dies we will have established ourselves on some other planet(s).

Who knows?

What we do know is that any planet that might have lit up to become our new home had better not count on getting its heat from the sun; it will have been the sun's demise that ensures Earth's demise.

Cruising around from one dying planet to another seems a lot of trouble to go to for unpromising returns.

Brian Cox relishes life; he says life is what gives the universe its meaning.

With sincerity and courage, he asks all the hard questions.

Following the evidence of the sciences, he tells us that in some trillions of years all the other suns will have burned out like our own, and "all life and all meaning" will vanish with them.

Where there was void before our universe came into existence, there will be void again.

I suggest the question of meaning cannot so easily be put aside.

Even if, as some surmise, our universe originated from some previous universe that also came and went, and so on over and over, the question always remains: why is there not just nothing at all?

Of course, time is on humanity's side: the sun is good for another five billion years.

But however long or short the time frame, it matters now because it is our present lives that are either pointless already if they are pointless in the end; or wonderful already if they are on their way to a wonderful future.

The overall direction of evolution has been towards life, with its potential for more wonderful and complex transformations. Can evolution deliver what it seems to promise? Or is it just part of the planet's life and destined to share its fate?

There was one transformation within the life of the planet that was qualitatively different from all others.

It reached right into the life of the planet, but took that life beyond anything evolution could do.

The Incarnation is about God's personal participation in the life of the planet and in human history - surpassing all other reasons for wonder, joy and thanksgiving!

A creation in which God has a stake is a creation with a future!!

Jesus' life - bringing healing, hope, peace, forgiveness and compassion into people's lives ratified human nature's deep hunch that this is what we were made for. And his resurrection confirmed that death does not have the last word.

Those who were witnesses to these things summed them up in their message that all creation is being "made new" - with a newness that creation cannot bring about for itself.

There is much at stake on this claim, because it means our lives will matter forever.

The whole of life is different - already - when we know that:

• all the good fruits of human nature, and all the good fruits of human enterprise,
• we shall find again, cleansed and transfigured. (Second Vatican Council, Church in the World, n.39)

People we love, times that were special, good things we have done, all somehow belong with us in our future.

What is truly precious to us now is never really lost.

The sacrifices we make for what is good and right and just, do count.

The planet Brian Cox has good reason to love, we have even greater reason to love.

So, how does this picture of our future sit with science's claim that our planet will die?

Some believe our spirits go off to Heaven, leaving material creation behind.

That view originates from ancient pagan belief that material things are somehow bad and ultimately don't belong. Christian belief is different, based on the ancient Hebrew belief that God made the whole of creation "good", and human life "very good". Our bodies are part of what it means to be human. It is our human nature, and the whole of creation, that is being "made new".

The early Christians spoke of the risen Christ as the "first fruits" of this new creation.

They emphasised that his resurrection involved his whole human nature.

It was bodily; but was not a return to this life. It belongs to creation "made new".

In this new form they experienced his real presence among them.

Reflecting on their experience, they now realised it was to be expected: "In a little while the world will no longer see me; but you will see me, because I live on, and you too will live" (John 14:19).

God's plan for our future does not discard material creation.

It is the present form of material creation that will pass. It will be transformed in the way that Jesus was transformed through his death and resurrection.

We don't have language for that, because language is based on our experience of the world in its present form.

It hardly matters that the planet in its present form will die.

What matters is that the Incarnation brought about a transformation that continues.

What that leads to is what we call Heaven.

There is more to the Incarnation than Santa Claus at Christmas and chocolate bunnies at Easter.

I indicated at the outset that our participation in the life of the planet and human history needs to be guided by what it means to be authentically human.

Much hangs on this, including how we use the sciences and technology.

So, what does ‘authentic' mean in this context?

In the second century, St Iraneus said we are never more fully alive and true to our own nature than when we "see God".

Pausing to know we are in God's presence sharpens our realisation that God never owed us our existence, or needed to create; we are part of what might never have been.

That's marvellous: it means that God, who didn't need us, wanted us!

When we know that, we become more alive.

That also means our existence is pure gift; so, we are true to ourselves most of all when we are being given, i.e. being there for others - in all the ways required by right relationships, with each other and with all creation.

That is being true to our human nature - "authentic."

It involves loving others the way God loves us: love that isn't owed or measured or needing to be deserved is a circuit breaker - the kind of love that "changes everything, and the only kind that can! Many Religious Orders, and lay movements based on the gospel, were founded to put that kind of loving into action.

Outside the Catholic tradition, it is exemplified in those religious movements which were based on the twin focus of social activism and a spiritual basis - e. g. Methodism, Quakerism, and many others.

Catholic social teachings about the dignity of every person and the sacredness of every life; the common good, including our common home; solidarity and option for the poor, are all premised on it.

It's hardly surprising Pope St John Paul II insisted that "humanity is the route the Church must take".

Being true to our nature - "authentic" - is compromised wherever a narrow focus on our own rights blinds us to our responsibility to be there "for others"; wherever deeper moments for noticing God's presence are crowded out by noise, hurry, and the pressures of modern living; where the fast flow of information displaces understanding and wisdom; wherever superficiality replaces depth - (e.g. where even news programmes are presented through the prism of entertainment, sometimes even called "shows")….

Authenticity involves being counter-cultural.

Knowing this, Pope St John Paul II told the New Zealand bishops to "make a systematic effort in your dioceses and parishes to open new doors to the experience of Christian prayer and contemplation" (Ad Limina visit 1998).

Contemplation means ‘seeing God', noticing God's presence, in the midst of life.

This changes how we think and act.

That is what the gospel means by "repentance" and conversion. It's about how we participate in creation's newness and its future.

• +Peter Cullinane was the first bishop of the Diocese of Palmerston North. Now retired he continues to be a respected writer and leader of retreats and is still busy at local, national, and international levels.

The purpose of ministries within the Church is to provide nurture and formation for that mission. It is the mission that matters.

Part I - Ministries

For some years we have all been aware of a growing gap between the number of parishes and the number of priests available to serve in them.

This reality serves as a wake-up call, but it is not the basis for greater lay involvement.

That involvement has its roots in Baptism and the very nature of the Church. Through Baptism we are all united to the priestly and prophetic mission of Christ.

This is the basis for our shared responsibility for what the Church is and what it does:

"Co-responsibility requires a change in mentality, particularly with regard to the role of the laity in the Church, who should be considered not as "collaborators" with the clergy, but as persons truly "co-responsible" for the being and the activity of the Church…" (Pope Benedict XVI, 10 August 2012).

This is more than just a matter of management, or meeting an emergency. It, too, is rooted in Baptism and the nature of the Church.

So why does this require a "change in mentality" if it already belongs to the nature of the Church?

History gives the answer.

During the first four centuries of the Church, laypeople had roles in the liturgy, preached, had a say in the election of bishops and nomination of priests; contributed to the framing of church laws and customs, prepared matters for, and participated in church councils, administered church properties, etc.

Then, after the conversion of the emperor Constantine and the mass conversions that followed, responsibility shifted one-sidedly into the hands of the clergy. And following the barbarian invasions, responsibility for public order also fell to them.

Over the following centuries, society came to see the priesthood as a profession, with social privilege.

During earlier centuries it had been a point of honour for ministers of the Church to live and look like everyone else.

Perception changed also within the Church.

This is perhaps symbolized by the altar being pushed back to the apse of the church, where liturgy became mainly a clerical affair with diminishing involvement of the laity.

Scholarship and a better understanding of the early Church would eventually return the liturgy to the whole body of the faithful and restore roles of pastoral care and administration to laywomen and men.

Most see our own day as a time of privileged opportunity for renewal.

It is challenging because it involves the need for more personal responsibility and moving away from the forms of tutelage and guardianship that shaped Church practices right up till the time of Pope Pius XII.

Others feel safer clinging to that recent past, often misunderstanding the meaning of "Tradition".

Part II - Mission

In Christ, God became immersed in human life; showed us how to live it, destined us to its fullness, and sent the Holy Spirit to draw us into what Christ did for us.

That is God's purpose, and the Church can have no other - "Humanity is the route the Church must take" (Pope John Paul II).

How we do this comes down to how we "do" love.

There is a loving that does not go deep enough to transform society. It works at the level of what seems fair and reasonable and deserving. This is what governments are properly concerned with.

Society must do better, and the Church's mission is to be the leaven in society.

It deals with a deeper kind of loving - love that is not limited to what seems fair and reasonable and deserved.

As Church, we are uniquely placed to do this because in the Person, life, death and resurrection of Jesus we see love that is unconditional, undeserved, and unstinting.

When we love as we have been loved, our love becomes a circuit breaker - precisely because it is not calculating and limited to what seems fair and reasonable and deserved.

Running through family life, civic life, industrial, commercial and political life, this kind of love "changes everything".

It brings about a way of living - of being human - that is true to what God made us for.

But, note, it starts with seeing God's love for us - contemplative seeing!

Christians have the least excuse for not recognizing the intrinsic link between contemplation and working for social justice because in celebrating Eucharist they move from contemplating God's extraordinary love for us to receiving and becoming the body broken for others and the blood (life) poured out for others.

This is how faith makes a decisive difference to all of human life, while fully respecting the rightful autonomy of everything that is properly secular.

In the midst of life God is drawing us towards the fulfilment of our own deepest yearnings, and wonderfully more, involving God's purpose for the whole of creation.

On that understanding of "the route the Church must take", we come to know what ministries are needed to nurture us for that mission, and what kind of formation is needed for those ministries.

Part III - Formation

To be involved in the processes of making our lives more truly human is a wonderful mission.

So what kind of formation is needed for ministries that serve that mission?

Writing about the formation needed for priests, Pope John Paul II said it needs to be "human, spiritual, intellectual and pastoral", and went on to say that continuing formation was a matter of a priest's faithfulness to his ministry, of love for the people, and in the proper sense a matter of justice, given the people's rights (Pastores Dabo Vobis, 70).

Commenting on some of the characteristics of human formation, the Congregation for the Clergy explicitly singled out the specific contribution of women, "not only for the seminarians' personal life but also with a view to their future pastoral activity" (Ratio Fundamentalis, 95).

The Congregation's reference was to Pope John Paul's emphasis on "what it means to speak of the ‘genius of women', not only in order to be able to see in this phrase a specific part of God's plan which needs to be accepted and appreciated but also in order to let this genius be more fully expressed in the life of society as a whole, as well as in the life of the Church; (Letter to Women, 1995, 10).

In our country, women have been carrying out significant roles at both Holy Cross Seminary and Good Shepherd College for some years.

What still needs to be developed, however, are ways of allowing parishioners generally to play a bigger part both in seminarians' formation and in the discernment of their vocation.

Those who will live with the results of formation, for better or for worse, should have a say in that formation and the selection of candidates.

Programmes for the formation of laywomen and men for parish ministries already exist, and I leave it to others to comment on them.

My concern here is with a very specific feature needed in Church leadership - both lay and ordained.

It is needed all the more because general education in our country has been gradually reduced to learning mainly practical skills.

Skills, both human/relational and technological properly belong within education, but not more so than the deeper aspects of what it means to be human.

Even when we know how to do the things necessary for successful living, we still need to know what ultimately gives meaning to it all.

Knowing that one's life has a purpose can make the difference between surviving, or not surviving, life's toughest times.

The will to live needs a reason to live. The need I am pointing to is the need for leaders who are "in the service of meaning" (Ratcliffe).

This is what it means in practice to be ministers of God's word. Knowing how much we mean to God is the most important thing we can know about ourselves, and truly life-giving.

Within a culture that has become superficial, reductionist and utilitarian, one of the ways we are in the service of meaning is by knowing how to identify flaws within that culture, especially where important aspects of daily life are devalued by becoming disconnected from what gives them their meaning, or at least their full meaning.

Formation will be incomplete unless it is formation "in the service of meaning".

Part IV - Where to start?

I referred to the increasing gap between the number of our parishes and the number of priests.

Simply combining parishes, whether for the sake of having a parish priest in every parish or out of due concern for future financial resourcing, does not resolve the problem because ultimately everything depends on pastoral effectiveness and enlivening.

An alternative to combining parishes is available where Church law allows for the pastoral care of parishes to be entrusted to laypeople, with a priest appointed to provide general supervision (canon 517/2), usually from another parish.

We already experience the insufficiency of suitable priests which is what justifies recourse to this canon.

Of course, where this happens, priests are still required for sacramental ministry.

It is possible that some priests might even prefer that kind of role, leaving the management of the parish to a team of qualified lay women and men.

Lay leadership of parishes requires proper formation - of parish and leaders - and proper remuneration.

Yet another starting point for renewal can be found in the experience of small base communities pioneered by the Church in some countries in South America and Asia.

Of course, we cannot simply transfer other local churches' experience to our situation. But we, too, can establish smaller communities within parishes, where leadership can be shared by teams and on a voluntary basis.

Such gatherings would be lay-led and need no official authorization. They can happen already, and develop in home-spun ways.

The Christian Base Communities in South American countries grew out of lay people coming together to pray and reflect on the scriptures and on their life situations, using the Catholic Action principle: "see, judge, act".

Their aim was a more just society and more truly human life for everyone - "the route the Church must take".

If this were happening in our own country, we could ask the kind of questions they asked: what are the causes of poverty in our country, and what can we do about those causes?

Indeed, this is an appropriate level at which to analyse whatever flaws in our culture leave us less able to deal with the epic issues of our time - those that degrade human life, human dignity, human rights, and the planet itself.

Addressing those issues - through the lenses of divine revelation - is itself a way of participating in the mission of the Church.

It is a good place to start because it is already do-able; it can be inclusive of those who feel unable to participate in other aspects of the Church's life; it does not need clerical leadership or control, but makes room for the ordained priesthood to present itself as a supporting ministry; it can model shared leadership, and lead to whatever forms of ministry might need to come next.

It is also a way of being Church that is "synodal", i.e. being "on the road together".

The larger gatherings that we call "Synods" presuppose the experience of walking and working together before we are ready for the decisions we gather to make at Synods. It also gives scope and opportunity for the participation of many who will not be at the Synods.

Part V - What More?

Pope Francis has rightly said: "the Church's customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures" all need to be channelled for what best serves the Church's mission of evangelising the world"; (Pope Francis, The Joy of the Gospel, n.27).

To act on that would make big differences.

Yet, even these changes are ‘small change' compared with where the Church has already been, and can yet go.

Bigger changes rightly need wider consultation. And synodality is pointless if it isn't about the road ahead and exploring what might yet be.

Ministry that is authorized to speak and act in Christ's name has its origin in Christ's historical intentions.

But its structure and concrete forms were determined by the Church during the apostolic period and after, continuing until late in the second century.

What the Church gave shape to after the apostolic period, it can give a different shape to now.

Being faithful to the Tradition involves more than just receiving what the early Church did; it involves doing what the early Church did: it shaped its ministries to meet the needs of its mission.

So long as the fullness of ordained responsibility remains intact - as in the college of bishops with and under the bishop of Rome - lesser participations in ordained ministry can be redistributed.

The ‘powers' presently distributed within the three ministries of bishop, presbyter and deacon would live on but enshrined within a wider variety of ordained ministries.

This would open up significant new pastoral opportunities, and incorporate a wider range of charisms into ordained ministry.

Whatever about that, fifty years ago, the International Theological Commission said "It is urgent to create much more diversified structures of the Church's pastoral action as regards both its ministries and its members, if the Church is to be faithful to its missionary and apostolic vocation." (The Priestly Ministry, pp 99,100).

• Peter Cullinane is Emeritus Bishop of Palmerston North. He has a Licentiate in Sacred Theology from the Angelicum, Rome and a Master of Theology from Otago University. Bishop Cullinane is a former President of the New Zealand Catholic Bishops' Conference and between 1983 and 2003 he was a member of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL).

There are features of our Western world's culture that seem to fit the image.

Important aspects of our lives seem to have become disconnected from what gives them meaning. If this is true, it is hardly healthy. I offer the following examples.

"Me" disconnected from "we"; and "my" from "our"

To say modern culture suffers from acute individualism is by now a truism.

Clamours for "my rights" often involve little or no sense of "my responsibilities".

It seems incredible that some would regard public health requirements as infringements of their rights - it's as silly as regarding the road rules as violations of their freedom.

During the pandemic, some have been willing to put other people's lives at risk for no better reason than to enjoy themselves. Obviously, legal restrictions are no substitute for moral formation.

But all is not lost:

• Catastrophes can still bring out the best in people.
• It is still easy to admire individuals who are generous, even risking their own lives for others.
• It is still easy to dislike gross forms of self-centredness and self-aggrandisement.
• People still give generously to charitable causes.
• And it is still easy to pity individuals caught up in over-anxious self-concern.

But there are also subtler forms of disconnect that we can become used to; they become ‘normalised'.

For example, in most if not all cultures, marriage has been a moment of celebration for whole communities. Now, "what we do is nobody else's business". Within an individualist culture, it isn't easy to see anything wrong with this. It's the culture that has become reductionist.

Work used to be regarded as an expression one's person and relationships with others. Now, within the culture we are regarding as ‘normal', it is reduced to a commodity and business transaction. Commercial value attaches to the work, not the person doing it, so work becomes unmoored from its own deepest meaning.

The common denominator to all forms of self-centredness is failure to realise that we can become our own true selves only through being "for others".

This paradox is at the centre of Jesus' teaching.

The drift away from his Gospel has become a drift away from what we need to become our own true selves. This will show up in the uglier kinds of self-centredness.

Facts' unmoored from truth

When truth is reduced to whatever we say to get whatever we want - whether it is true or not - we are targets for manipulation. We become vulnerable to every kind of spin - commercial spin, political spin, and agenda-driven ideologies.

Scientists work hard to establish facts.

They know we need to act on what is objectively true.

Solving crimes, the judicial system, and research in every field are all based on the premise that truth matters.

All these, and most of life, would be turned up-side-down if it were enough to say: "truth is whatever the individual thinks it is - it is true for her/him" and "right is whatever the individual chooses - it is right for him/her".

How could we even say rape or sexual abuse are wrong if it might be "right" for the person doing it?

So, we cannot escape the need to acknowledge an objective difference between true and false, and right and wrong.

Conspiracy theories during the pandemic duped some people into believing claims that were far more bizarre than anything the sciences ever present us with.

What kind of culture is it when they are so gullibly believed?

Parroting cliches is a lazy alternative to serious thinking. For example: lazy thinkers don't distinguish between judging a person's actions (which we may do, and sometimes must), and judging their conscience (which we may not - because we cannot know whether or how much they are guilty before God.)

That is the meaning of the saying: "who am I to judge?"

"Who am I to judge", doesn't mean we can't judge their actions!

But even when we rightly judge that another's actions are wrong, it is often necessary to look further.

Their offending can have deep roots in early experience of abuse or deprivation or cultural alienation.

If we are personally attached to truth, we will look more deeply, and avoid superficial judgments and demonising.

Lazy thinking also buys the slogan used to justify abortion: "it's my body," even though the sciences leave no doubt that the embryo is actually someone else's body.

Sexual activity unmoored from sexuality's meaning

I recently heard some young people say they felt it was wrong to send sexual imagery online, but they didn't know why.

They will not come any closer to knowing through "consent education".

"Consent education" is right to teach the need to avoid activities that are not legal or consensual or safe. But that is as far as it can go because it is unconcerned with sexuality's meaning - other than it being a source of pleasure.

That kind of ‘education' allows, if it doesn't promote, the idea that anything goes provided it is legal, consensual and safe.

But is it?

A more holistic education would allow young people to learn about virtue.

Modesty is the virtue that protects chastity.

Of course, if society has given away the virtue of chastity, then it won't feel any need for modesty. Chastity is the virtue that applies self-respect, restraint and respect for others, to sexuality.

Unchastity involves a lack of self-respect, restraint and respect for others.

The Department of Internal Affairs' statistics regarding the extent of attempts in NZ to access child sex sites, and the increasing demand for younger children, and more violent forms of abuse, show where we go when the meaning of sexuality is ignored, or reduced to pleasure.

There have been strong, organized and determined cultural movements whose agenda has been to "liberate" sexuality from all previous restraints.

We look back incredulously to the 1960's through 1990's when some activists described themselves as ‘victims' of harsh laws aimed at preventing "man-boy love"; and children as ‘victims' because harsh parents didn't want them to have that kind of loving care!!

"Inter-generational sex" and "man-boy love' were euphemisms intended to promote the acceptability of what society calls pederasty.

For some, the aim was to shed categories such as ‘heterosexual' and ‘homosexual' in favour of more fluid and non-binary language. Even though by the 1990's those movements had mostly lost their credibility, the underlying ideologies have a way of re-surfacing.

So sooner or later, we do need to come to the question: what is sexuality's meaning?

What is its purpose?

Yes, it is for pleasure.

But so is unchastity. So, there must be some meaning beyond that.

Honest reflection recognises two purposes that are entwined and come together uniquely in marriage: they are sexuality's potential for deeply nurturing the love of two people, and in a way that is also designed to generate new life as the fruit of their love. And because new life needs to be protected and nurtured, the child's parents need to be in a relationship that is stable, committed and faithful.

Whatever allowances we rightly make for people of various orientations or preferences (see below), ultimately it is marriage that can fulfil sexuality's deepest meanings.

Detached from marriage, sexual activities are detached from sexuality's meaning.

Gender identity unmoored from sexual identity

Gender identity is not a label that is put on us, by ourselves or by others. It is given by nature long before we start making our own decisions.

But what about the tensions between biological reality and psychological/emotional reality that some people experience?

We move closer to an answer when we allow both faith and the sciences to be part of our thinking: the world is a work in progress, and we are part of this evolving world.

This means that none of us is a finished product. We are all at one stage or another of being unfinished.

We can be born with deficiencies, or incur disabilities, some of which last through life.

In fact, we are never finished while death is still in front of us.

When there is something that cannot be resolved or fulfilled within our present span of life, it helps to remember that our life was not something we had a right to in the first place; it is simply a gift. And our present life is not the whole of it.

In that kind of world, personal development does not always take place at the same pace or even follow the usual pattern.

Those who are caught in any of the dilemmas resulting from different stages of, or lines of, development have a right to the same respect and unconditional love as everyone else.

Still, as Professor Kathleen Stock, herself a lesbian, writing about "Why Reality Matters for Feminism," reminds us, there are only two biological sexes and no amount of hormonal or surgical treatment can change that.

She is aware that by seeking surgical or hormonal treatment to support gender change, people are implicitly acknowledging the link between gender identity and sexual identity.

But she is also aware, and critical of, the more recent claim that they should not need to; it should be enough simply to declare that you are male or female, regardless of biological reality.

Is that where the separation of gender identity and sexual identity can take us?

If reality matters, then it matters to acknowledge that, both socially and biologically, male and female find a certain completion in each other, precisely by being each other's ‘opposite' - which is what the ancient Genesis story has been saying all along.

Politics unmoored from the common good

Politics unmoored from the common good is politics unmoored from its own purpose.

The purpose of political involvement is to create a social and economic environment in which everyone has the opportunity to progress towards achieving their own potential and a fulfilling life.

In a true democracy, political parties differ over how to do this, while being united in a common pursuit of the common good.

Partisan self-interest placed above the common good is a throw-back to tribalism, and like ancient forms of tribalism, it undermines the unity that is needed for achieving the common good.

The alternative to the common good is mere partisan power.

This gives rise to all kinds of inequalities and absurdities (e.g. being duped by misinformation and lies that have been discredited by the courts; basing decisions about masks and social distancing not on science but on which political party you belong to!)

We might be surprised at such fickleness, though perhaps less surprised that it happens in a country where States can still pass anti-democratic laws, and that does not yet have a proper separation of powers.

But the lesson for ourselves is how foolish and self-destructive we too could become through unmooring rights from responsibilities. ‘facts' from truth, and politics from pursuit of the common good.

"Religion" unmoored from ordinary life

Early in the Christian tradition, St Iraneus said the glory of God is human beings coming alive through seeing God in all that God has made and all that God is doing in human lives.

We are being drawn to God through the experience of created beauty, goodness and truth.

Popes St John Paul II and Benedict XVI have picked up Iraneus' theme, emphasising that since human beings becoming fully alive is God's agenda in creating and redeeming us, it is also "the route the Church must take."

So, religion is not somehow running alongside our ordinary lives; it is our ordinary lives being made extraordinary, being sanctified, graced - family life, civic life, industrial and commercial life, political life…

Of course, this is unfinished work, and so it will be until God is "all in all" (1 Cor. 15:28).

In the meantime, people for whom life's shortfalls create a sense of insecurity are the ones more likely to seek escape into "religion" perceived as some kind of separate sphere, or construct built on to life, or, worse, a kind of bubble (even having its own separate language).

This perception of ‘religion" being alongside ordinary life is the assumption of some bloggers, and it seems, even some bishops (in Britain, Ireland, France and USA) who resent government restrictions affecting church gatherings even during a pandemic.

It is as if the sciences and good government don't apply to "religion's" separate sphere.

A concept of religion unmoored from the needs of the common good is unmoored from the ordinary processes of becoming more truly human and fully alive, which is what gives glory to God.

Conclusion

A culture in which so many aspects of life have become unmoored from what gives them meaning is a culture that is reductionist, superficial, utilitarian…

The question is: within that kind of culture, how well equipped can we be to deal with the epic issues of our time - those that degrade human life, human dignity, human rights and the planet itself?

• Peter Cullinane is Emeritus Bishop of Palmerston North. He has a Licentiate in Sacred Theology from the Angelicum, Rome and a Master of Theology from Otago University. Bishop Cullinane is a former President of the New Zealand Catholic Bishops' Conference and between 1983 and 2003 he was a member of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL).

With all due respect to French leaders, I think they could start by reviewing the implications of laïcité.

At this time, they have much to say about "Islamic terrorism". Worse, some of the language they are using is the language of warfare and of terrorism itself.

Obviously, there can be no justification for what was done in Nice. But in wanting to explain the causes of such violence they are looking no further than Islam.

In a recent BBC Hardtalk programme, Stephen Sackur interviewed French professor of sociology and political advisor, Dominique Schnapper, who explained what she called the French form of secularism, which she assured us is superior to what we find in Britain and USA.

Most of us accept the separation of Church and State, including agencies of the State, and rightly. But laïcité goes further by including "the public sphere" with the State. Consequently, religion is mainly for the private sphere.

According to the Professor, curtailing the scope of religion in the public sphere gives people freedom!!

I suggest, on the contrary, that the State and the public forum are not the same; the public forum belongs to the people, to society.

It is where minds meet to be enriched by each other; it is where proper integration takes place.

Relegating religion and cultural diversity to the private sphere prevents integration! In fact, it is a recipe for creating ghettos! I would have thought this was obvious, though she did mention that she would not expect the English to understand!

I suggest that institutions dedicated to health care, social welfare and education, though administered by the State, are also not agencies of the State: they too belong to society, to the people, and therefore should be allowed to reflect society, including its pluralism, and not have to avoid or banish religious and cultural expressions.

Perhaps they should be called "State-run" institutions, not "State institutions".

The professor points out that the French understanding of secularism is a "product" of the French revolution and its rejection of previous forms of authoritarianism (of aristocracy and Church).

True, but that makes it a form of push-back, and a product of negative experience. It needs to move beyond its origins, and become positive. But that requires dialogue at every level, which is what laicite inhibits!

She is surely justified in allowing criticism of other people's views, including religious views, and she is right to say that criticising people's views is not necessarily insulting the people who hold them. But somewhere there is a line between critique and mockery?

It seems to me mere sophistry to say that mocking what is sacred to other people is not disrespecting those people.

Pope Francis' latest encyclical letter (especially chapter 6) is spot on where he talks of the crucial role of dialogue and need for greater respect and kindness within cultures and within politics.

It is within a culture of genuine respect for others, kindness and dialogue, that we instinctively know the difference between critique and mockery, between fair comment and incitement, between free speech and hate speech…

Schnapper is genuinely concerned that some kind of aberration seems to have taken place within Islam. But might she also need to ask whether there is some kind of aberration within the French form of secularism?

• Bishop Peter Cullinane, Bishop Emeritus, Diocese of Palmerston North, New Zealand.

"How did I celebrate under lockdown? - Jesus and I did it quietly together; we are hoping to celebrate with others later. He is in my bubble," he told NZ Catholic.

The anniversary on April 23 occurred when New Zeland was under Level 4 COVID-19 lockdown.

Everyone in the country was confined to their bubble and gatherings of every kind were prohibited.

Cardinal John Dew has expressed, ‘Warmest Congratulations to Bishop Peter and sincere thanks for his service as a bishop to Palmerston North and to New Zealand."

He asked that people "remember Bishop Peter in gratitude in your prayers."

Cullinane was the first bishop of the Palmerston North diocese.

He retired in 2012 but is still busy at the local, national, and international levels.

Bishop Peter has served on several International Catholic Committees.

He has given many years of service on ICEL (the International Commission for English in the Liturgy) and has always shown a deep interest in liturgy and liturgical reform.

He has also contributed significantly to both the Ecumenical and Inter-Faith dialogue within New Zealand and abroad, bringing closer relationships between different denominations and faith traditions.

Cullinane's many writings have offered a wide breadth of knowledge and learning from which many have benefited.

10 years ago he promoted a national campaign to get a new symbol to identify Catholic clergy.

He noted that clerical dress was being worn less by priests, but no new symbol had been inserted in its place.

It was a matter of being identifiable, without having to dress formally for casual occasions, he said.

"Identify so people know who I am, and identify with the people so I don't seem to come from a different race."

Source

• nzcatholic.org.nz
• wn.catholic.org.nz
• pndiocese.org.nz
• stuff.co.nz
• Image: stuff.co.nz

What a record to have!

If we are living in the real world, we are going to want to know why.

Much commentary on suicide rates and suicide prevention recites statistics and demographics, trying to identify the risk factors.

This is an essential part of what needs to happen; but only part.

It is commonly acknowledged that risk factors include loneliness, bullying, mental illness, trauma and deprivation. There is also risk from some illnesses which have an organic origin and these require a more specialised discussion than is possible here.

"People need to know their life is worth living no matter what is happening to them."

A consequence of the risk factors considered here can be the feeling that one's life is no longer worth living. Somehow, therefore, people need to know their life is worth living no matter what is happening to them.

Before looking more closely at this, it might be useful to identify some of the obstacles that get in the way of them being sure of this. I shall name four characteristics of our national culture that are not helpful:

Intellectual superficiality

I support the view there should be public discussion of this topic, which obviously, needs to be accurately informed and responsibly conducted.

But in a culture with diminishing regard for careful argument, preferring just head-line speak and blips of information such as are available through the social media, popular discussion often falls short of being a true ‘discussion'.

Moreover, in this cultural context, clear understanding and good judgment can be impeded by the way actual examples of pain and suffering, which we all find distressful, can distort careful argument.

Within a popular culture that is intellectually superficial, even the social sciences find it hard to compete with the pulling power of emotion.

Double standards and ambiguity in society's attitudes

It is not easy to convey the idea that one's life always matters regardless of what is happening, if at the same time society is proposing that sometimes life is no longer worth living. Whatever the case for or against euthanasia, ultimately, that is the message of legalised euthanasia.

"If youth suicides are to be discouraged, and assisted suicide made legal, the question has to be asked: what makes them different?"

How people are valued

If youth suicides are to be discouraged, and assisted suicide made legal, the question has to be asked: what makes them different?

Here we come face to face with what it means to live within a culture that values people not on the intrinsic dignity of being human but on their ability to function, that is, ‘their ability to be successful, productive, independent and in control'. (Kleinsman, Dr J Nathaniel Report, August 2017, p 3.)

The ability to function becomes the basis of differentiation between lives that are worth living and lives that are deemed not to be. Society needs to face up to what this way of categorising people implies, even apart from the question of suicide.

Loss of a sense of transcendence

We live in a culture that doesn't even look for reasons why life might still be worthwhile when it is no longer useful or has become a burden.

Are there reasons that transcend the criteria of functionality?

To see no further than what people can be useful for, or how well they can still manage, is a stunted way of looking at people and at human life. This brings us to the spiritual dimension of suicide prevention.

"To see no further than what people can be useful for, or how well they can still manage, is a stunted way of looking at people and at human life."
The Spiritual Dimension

It is not enough to analyse why a person might not want to live. We need to reflect on what usually makes people want to live.

The desire to live depends on, more than anything else, the experience of being loved.

This experience carries with it the experience of belonging, and a sense of self-worth, that normally come through the tangible experience of other people's love for us - starting with one's own parents.

The absence of this experience of being loved can be damaging, and devastating.

Fortunately, the experience of being really loved, even where it has previously been lacking, can still be a powerful source of healing.

One who ought to know, having given his own life over to helping the most troubled and most needy, namely Jean Vanier, has said ‘People who are deeply depressed are transformed when they know they are really loved.'

"The desire to live depends on, more than anything else, the experience of being loved."

The Catholic tradition dares to say God's love is made present to us in human love. The ‘spiritual' dimension of human well-being is deeply human!

Unfortunately, the human experience of being loved can fail so easily.

When the experience of being loved, especially by those who know us best, is lacking, we become unsure of ourselves, self-doubting and prone to anxiety. There is more than enough evidence of how marriage failure can affect children, and spouses.

The mystery of suicide is more complex yet, because some of its victims come from seemingly good family backgrounds.

As young people begin to move out on their own - the normal development of autonomy - the bonds that helped them to know their self-worth become looser. But they still have a deep human need to know they are truly loveable.

It comes down to this: whether we come out of strong family life or weak family life, our sense of self-worth and the value of our life, need to have roots in a love that cannot fail us.

It is not being suggested here that ‘religion is the answer'.

On the contrary, there are distortions of ‘religion' that can do the damage. But, ultimately, the love God has for us is of the kind that cannot fail us.

Unlike every other love, God's love for us, revealed in the Person of Christ and the events of his life, is unconditional and everlasting.

God's mercy pursues us even when we have let ourselves - and perhaps everybody else - down.

Christian revelation is above all the revelation of how much we mean to God - and that can mean more to us than anyone or anything that would make us think less of ourselves.

It is this game-changing love that is denied to people by widespread failure to give them a formation in life-giving, joyous faith.

This lack deprives them of the greatest reason for believing in themselves and believing their lives really matter.

They need to know this, especially in times of difficulty.

Without this deep sense of reassurance, some will look for other ways of escaping the pain of a life that seems cruel and unfair, when opportunities constantly elude them, and then self-blame makes it worse.

Short of suicide there are drugs and other ways of trying to forget.

At a deeper level, what they are trying to escape is meaninglessness. What they need is meaning - over-arching, all-encompassing, unassailable meaning!

Like all false prophets, the deniers have much to answer for.

It is an illusion on their part to think secular ideology is the touchstone of truth.

Most of humankind applauds the work of Mother Teresa and the very many others like her, from all religions, whose work is pointless if people are to be valued only in terms of their usefulness, or ability to manage for themselves.

Those who do see the point, know that human beings have a value that reaches beyond the short horizons of our life-spans, which is what makes them so special even during this life.

A spirituality that is ‘deeply human' is not somewhere ‘up in the sky'.

It is earthed in all that makes up human life.

Its raw material includes the planet we are made from, as well as the events of our daily lives.

What we do, socially, culturally, artistically, economically - no matter how small or seemingly insignificant - has a value that goes beyond our short life-times. ‘

All the good fruits of human nature, and of human enterprise, cleansed and transfigured, we shall find again.' (Second Vatican Council, Church in Modern World, n. 39). Again, we cannot fully taste and savour our lives without a sense of transcendence.

But what about situations that can only be described as bad?

People rightly try to escape poverty, oppression and hardship in all its forms.

Bad is bad, and an authentic spirituality never tries to bless what is bad or unjust.

On the contrary, it works for justice, peace and human development. So, in what sense can we still claim that every life is worth living, even when things are going very wrong?

Again, just as a sense of transcendence is the only way to see past the limited and limiting criteria of functionality, so here too, a sense of transcendence is the only way to see beyond the ills that oppress all people in one way or another.

Hope is not a mere assurance that things will turn outright. Rather, it is deep down knowing that ultimately all will be well even when things don't turn out right!

But this is a God-given awareness; it presupposes a person's openness to God, an intimate familiarity with God and God's ways. And this is what young people are deprived of in an environment of religious indifference and disregard.

Does this have something to do with our high rate of youth suicide?

If people are to know their lives are still worth living even when the odds seem hopelessly against them, they will need to have reasons that don't collapse when everything else does; transcendent reasons; God-given reasons.

"Hope … is deep down knowing that ultimately all will be well even when things don't turn out right! This God-given awareness…is what young people are deprived of in an environment of religious indifference and disregard."

• Bishop Peter Cullinane, Bishop Emeritus, Diocese of Palmerston North
• First published in Wel-com; republished with permission.

Not only that: it teaches that "... all the good fruits of human nature, and all the good fruits of human enterprise, we shall find again, cleansed and transfigured..." (Second Vatican Council, GS 39).

In other words, nothing that is precious to us - in our own life or in the lives of our friends - is ever lost. It will all belong in the "new creation".

It is natural also to remember those who have died.

This helps us to experience our on-going relationship with them.

A sense of still belonging to each other is heightened when our remembering is ritualized, as it is in our nation's ANZAC memorial services.

A deep human instinct assures us of this belonging, and so does our faith.

This is evidenced by the participation of so many young people who are choosing to participate in these services.

Just as our life is a gift from God in the first place, so too is eternal life.

There are no words for describing the wonderful future God has in store for us. The scriptures use picture language, e.g. a great banquet.

And because it is a gift - not owed to us - we wait for God to invite us in, at a time of God's choosing; we don't decide the time - we don't gate-crash.

Nor do we let our life or our death just happen to us; we actively receive them.

We receive gifts by saying "thank you."

And remember: hope is not an assurance that things will always turn out the way we would like; rather, it is deep conviction that "all will be well" even when they don't!

In the end, all our becoming is safely in God's hands:

Do not let your hearts be troubled.
Trust in God still, and trust in me.
There are many rooms in my Father's house;
If there were not, I should have told you.
I am going now to prepare a place for you,
and after I have gone and prepared you a place,
I shall return to take you with me;
so that where I am, you may be too. (John 14:1-3)

• +Peter Cullinane was the first bishop of the Diocese of Palmerston North. Now retired he continues to be a respected writer and leader of retreats and is still busy at local, national, and international levels. Here he shares his reflections on sciences and Christian faith. To conclude the introduction of this series he quotes Albert Einstein, "Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind."
• This is the twelveth and final in a series of chapters from his letter to senior students
• Image: Manawatu Standard

We belong to a community of saints and sinners who share the journey and support one another.

Our relationship with Christ is personal, but not private. It is in and through and with the community of his disciples.

What Jesus did for us by his life and death was a gift; it wasn't owed to us.

But gifts are not imposed; we have to receive them and make them our own.

It is the Holy Spirit who enables us to do this, in all the ways we live our faith.

This happens especially in the celebration of Eucharist: at the Last Supper Jesus told his disciples "do this in memory of me".

This isn't just remembering in our minds. Jesus was echoing the ancient Hebrew practice of commemorating the Passover.

That ritual gave the Jews of each succeeding generation a way of personally sharing in what happened at the Exodus.

That was a once-for-all event, but the freedom it brought was meant for those who came after as well. Eucharist is a memorial in that sense.

It gives Christians of succeeding generations a way of stepping forward to personally and more deeply participate in Jesus' Passover from death to life, and to share in the freedom and joy this gave him. "... God brought us to life with Christ... and raised us upwith him and gave us a place with him in heaven... (Ephesians 2:5, 6).

That is now who we are - through real union with Christ.Eucharist also makes us sharers in his mission: in receiving Holy Communion we receive Him whose body was ‘given up' for others, and blood (life) was ‘poured out' for others.

Our Amen expresses our commitment to being ‘for others' - being self-giving.

"Even when Eucharist is celebrated on the humble altar of a country church, it is always in someway celebrated on the altar of the world.It unites heaven and earth. It embraces and permeates all creation." (Pope John Paul II)

"In the Eucharist, the whole cosmos gives thanks to God. Indeed, the Eucharist is itself an act of cosmic love". (Pope Francis)

Gather us in, the lost and forsaken,
gather us in, the blind and the lame;
call to us now, and we shall awaken,
we shall arise at the sound of our name.

We are the young, our lives are a mystery.
We are the old who yearn for your face.
We have been sung throughout all of history,
called to be light to the whole human race. (GIA Publications Inc. Marty Haugen.)

• +Peter Cullinane was the first bishop of the Diocese of Palmerston North. Now retired he continues to be a respected writer and leader of retreats and is still busy at local, national, and international levels. Here he shares his reflections on sciences and Christian faith. To conclude the introduction of this series he quotes Albert Einstein, "Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind."
• This is the eleventh in a series of chapters from his letter to senior students
• Image: Manawatu Standard

How they felt about him gives us a window on the kind of Person he was - and a window on how we would have felt if we had been there!

That's why we need to look at him in the four gospels.

Down the centuries, and still today, people give their lives for him.

All that Jesus went through for our sakes reveals how greatly we are loved by God.

On Good Friday, evil wasn't prevented from happening; instead it was turned against itself - used for its own defeat.

That is how God works through the evils and sufferings we experience: "For those who love God, all things work together for their good" (St Paul to the Romans 8:28).

When you think about it, one who can transform what happened on Good Friday into what happened on Easter Sunday is serious about ensuring life and love triumph over all our mess-ups, and all our sins, and death itself.

Imagine the joy He must have experienced on the morning of his resurrection.

That's the joy He wants to share with us.

Before His death, He promised He would bring his disciples a peace which nothing in the world could give, and nothing take away.

His risen life is not bound by the limitations of time and space, and so his presence to us is real, our relationship with him is real, and our conversations with him are real.

"The mystery is Christ among you, your hope of glory" (St Paul to the Colossians 1:27).

"When the scriptures are proclaimed in the liturgy, Christ is speaking (present tense!) to his people" (Second Vatican Council; Liturgy 7).

He is still doing the things he always did - now using a kind of sign language (the sacraments) - healing, forgiving, giving hope and new life.

In the liturgy we allow ourselves to be absorbed by the mystery of Christ's presence and what He is doing for us.

This is truly sacred time.

In fact, we move beyond time as it is measured by the movement of the planets; we move into another kind of time, namely the unfolding of that plan God had in mind from the beginning. (Ephesians 1:3-14).

It reached its high point in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Through the seasons, cycles, feasts and rituals of the liturgy we connect with those events. Awareness of God's plan gives meaning to our lives.

For all of us, our becoming isn't complete until God has made "the whole of creation new" (Revelation 21:1-5).

In the meantime, regardless of what can happen to any other aspect of our becoming, our relationship with the Risen Christ is always open, always nurturing, always there. Through union with him we are part of that new creation.

• +Peter Cullinane was the first bishop of the Diocese of Palmerston North. Now retired he continues to be a respected writer and leader of retreats and is still busy at local, national, and international levels. Here he shares his reflections on sciences and Christian faith. To conclude the introduction of this series he quotes Albert Einstein, "Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind."
• This is the tenth in a series of chapters from his letter to senior students
• Image: Manawatu Standard

They will be the kind of experiences that point beyond themselves to something more.

For example, something wonderful in nature that leaves you feeling you are part of something much bigger than your own life-time.

Or, the sudden feeling that even the good things of life (a good marriage, a successful business, good friends, good health, etc) still leave an empty gap somewhere inside you.

Your own deep self tells you that there's more than all this.

Or, someone you love has died, and suddenly everything around you appears in a different light: the things that seemed so important to you don't seem quite so important now, and the things you knew about only vaguely, like heaven, suddenly seem so real.

Or, some sight or sound or scent will trigger some fond memory, and you know you are still linked to the people and the places of your past.

There's a feeling that they are still part of you, and that one day all good things will come together again.

"The profound is always
within our reach,
masquerading as the ordinary"(Daniel O'Leary)

Or, you might be listening to the kind of music that makes you want to be still and quiet because it seems to be drawing you towards something.

Or, in some quiet space on your own, you just experience the mystery of your own self, unique in all the universe.

Why?

In all these experiences you are getting hints that there is more to your existence than you might have thought.

The opposite to "seeing" in these ways is "not noticing" - because we don't stop still long enough to notice the "something more" - as if sleep-walking!

Some people have even narrowed their vision down to seeing only what is useful or profitable or pleasurable.

Some see the world only as a kind of quarry to be exploited and used.

They don't notice that it is first and foremost a precious environment that can lift our spirits, and invites us to "see", and makes us want to give thanks.

At the beginning of the second century CE, St Iraneus said that we honour God by being alive - with the life that "comes from seeing God."

"Seeing" God means knowing God's presence-in the experience of beauty, or love, or graced moments, or the sight of life-long faithfulness, or the sight of friends being reconciled, or in love's heroic sacrifices, or in forgiveness and peace, or in the smiles on children's faces, or in any of the ways that nature is revealed to us as a gift - God being theGiver."

Look at the dance,
and you will see the Dancer" (A. de Mello)

This deep sense of God's presence in all creation has very practical consequences, which the Maori world-view recognizes: the world's resources are entrusted to us but belong to God; we have a duty of care for the earth (kaitiakitanga); the needs of the common good and our duty of care for one another (manaakitanga) take priority in all matters of property and ownership; etc.

This world-view has been, and continues to be, trampled over by the excesses of Western individualism and capitalism.

There are forms of poverty that result from this kind of oppression.

• +Peter Cullinane was the first bishop of the Diocese of Palmerston North. Now retired he continues to be a respected writer and leader of retreats and is still busy at local, national, and international levels. Here he shares his reflections on sciences and Christian faith. To conclude the introduction of this series he quotes Albert Einstein, "Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind."
• This is the ninth in a series of chapters from his letter to senior students
• Image: Manawatu Standard