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28th Sunday of Year C
In his book, “Beyond Belief,” Hugh Mackay, the Australian social researcher outlines the deep vein of ambivalence about religion that runs through Australian society: on the one hand many Australians do not actively worship, yet they still like to see local churches operating, and we still turn to churches to baptise our children and to educate them.[1] Around two thirds of Australians say we believe in God or some ‘higher power’, but fewer than one in ten of us attend church weekly. So those of us gathered here for Mass are an extraordinary minority no matter how mainstream we might consider ourselves to be. And all of his means 90% of the population…
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Broken Bay Diocesan Bible Conference Opening Mass – Friday 11 October 2019 (Luke 11: 15-26)
It was once suggested to the Nobel laureate Patrick White that he enter psychoanalysis. He flatly refused because he said that if he got rid of his demons then his spark of genius would evaporate. Somewhere we have to learn how to live with our demons rather than simply get rid of them. And by this, I mean, that we have to learn how to live with what we consider to be flaws in our personality, vulnerabilities in our make-up. We have to let go of a frenetic attempt at perfection in which we seek to become somehow flaw-less. It’s not the presence of flaws that is actually the problem for us; it…
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27th Sunday of Year C
Jesus was a great story-teller, and as a story-teller of his time in 1st centrury Palestine he knew the means that a story-teller used to convey the meaning of what he wished ot share. One of those techniques is hyperbole: something is overstated in order to make a point. It was an excellent technique in an oral culture, used to the art of storytelling. The hyperbole, itself, is not to be taken literally. People would go away and remember the over-statement and in time understand what was being said underneath. The use of juxtaposition is another technique: two statements are put aside each other, one informing and opening up the meaning of…
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What might the Church of the future look like where young people have a voice? – Notes for the Panel Keynote for the 2019 BENet Conference, Glebe
I can only answer the question from my limited context: Australian, Western, male – informed by my Cistercian background but also by my own current role of leadership for a diocese. I cannot speak for every context. For my reflections I draw principally from Christus Vivit– the recent Apostolic Exhortation to the Youth of the World by Pope Francis, and a 2017 presentation by a young woman of our Diocese of Broken Bay, Ashleigh Green, an appointed observer at the Synod on Youth that is the precedent to Christus Vivit.[1] If we wish to answer the question I recommend a careful reading of the Exhortation – it really presents as a portrait of…
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Educating for Relationship – Insights from the Benedictine Tradition for Contemporary Catholic Education – BENet 2019 International Conference, Glebe
The ancient text of the Rule of St Benedict has endured because of its insight into the importance of relationship as a pedagogy of formation and leadership. The workshop will explore that insight in dialogue with the document on Catholic Education, Educating Together in Catholic Schools (2007) and through the lens of the significance of ‘listening’ as a key Benedictine value and proposed by the French writer, Simone Weil as the key to education. The workshop will invite participants to consider how this might achieve expression both as leaders in their communities and in the culture of the educational community itself particularly in a socially diverse context The Context: Relationship under…
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26th Sunday of Year C – Social Justice Sunday
This Sunday, the last in September, is annually commemorated as Social Justice Sunday in the Church in Australia. We focus this year on Communications with the publication of Making it Real: Genuine Human Encounter in our Digital World. It raises the question of how we genuinely connect with one another. As Bishop Brady highlights in the Foreword to the Statement, “People of all generations hunger for friendship and genuine human encounter because we are made for community. Our digital world enables us to be more connected than ever before, but sadly it can also be a place of manipulation, exploitation and violence.” This indeed is one of the great paradoxes…
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St Vincent de Paul Society Festival Mass – Diocese of Broken Bay
“Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” (Matt 9: 35-38) If we were to go around and ask, “Who stands out for you with leadership?” the responses might be interesting. Perhaps we would think of a great political leader, a great social reformer, a sporting hero. Jesus, himself,…
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Silver Anniversary of Ordination of Fr Shaju John and Fr Joy Kunnassery – 25th Sunday of Year C – Asquith
For a long time, it has been the social rule in Australia that the topics of religion and politics are not to be raised in polite conversation. In Australia, particularly, when religious leaders start talking about political or economic matters many of us start feeling uneasy, if not even embarrassed. We have concerns about naivety, or anxieties about appeals drawn from a sectarian past, or fears about ecclesiastical interference in affairs that are rightly independent of the structure of the Church. Even if the voice is allowed, often enough the statements are relegated to be ‘motherhood’ and quaint, and really without a great deal of consequence. However, I think the Word…
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25th Sunday of Year C
For a long time, it has been the social rule in Australia that the topics of religion and politics are not to be raised in polite conversation. For a great deal of our history we have also had the adage that politics and religion don’t mix, and that they, therefore, should be kept quite separate. In Australia, particularly, when religious leaders start talking about political or economic matters many of us start feeling uneasy, if not even embarrassed. We entertain concerns about naivety, or anxieties about appeals drawn from a sectarian past, or fears about ecclesiastical interference in affairs that are rightly independent of the structure of the Church. Even if the religious voice…
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Graduation Homily: Loreto Normanhurst (20 September), Brigidine St Ives (23 September), Mater Maria Warriewood (24 September)
In a remarkable little novel called “The Passion” by the feminist writer, Jeanette Winterson the main character Henri declares, “To love someone else enough to forget about yourself, even for one moment, is to be free.” There is a part of us that can consider involvement in the life of another as a loss of freedom. Commitment certainly brings a responsibility that means I can no longer live life only in reference to myself. However, Henri is saying that real freedom comes when we lose our self in love for someone else. In the novel he goes on to say that “some say love enslaves, and passion is a demon, and many have…
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