An inspirational presence at Mass
At the Catholic Thing, Michael Pakaluk said he likes to attend an early morning Mass – partly because his faith is helped by the mothers with small children. Their mere presence at Mass – given all the trouble of getting children ready and out of the house – is a witness in itself. “Morning Mass is a deeply ordered act, which the mom manages to set up at the start of the day, at a time of life that inherently resists order. Her presence at that service has all of the character of a beachhead on Iwo Jima; the consecration and her Communion, a raising of the flag.”
Her experience of Mass is of constant distractions from children – “far from the romantic ideal of peaceful communion with God” – but this reminds us that faith is about the will, not the emotions, and that perseverance will bear fruit.
Pakaluk added that he didn’t mean to criticise “in the slightest” the “many moms who want to get to weekday Mass but can’t manage it, or who started and couldn’t continue”.
The football manager who prayed for hours
At the Scottish Catholic Observer, Peter Diamond previewed a BBC Alba documentary of the great footballer and Celtic manager Tommy Burns. As the documentary shows, Burns’s Catholicism was central to his lie. Burns’s son Michael tells the documentary: “His Faith was so important to him. To this day I’ve never seen anybody pray like my dad – he would sit for hours and I always thought, I wonder what he’s saying, what is he doing for that length of time in his own world.”
His daughter Emma remembers that, after Burns’s death from skin cancer in 2008, she felt consoled by remembering his strong faith. “When you went to Mass with my dad it was almost like he zoned out, like he just went into his own zone in Mass and he just seemed so calm… Dad just felt like everything that was good in his life came from God.”
Burns was a daily Mass-goer. During his footballing days he would go after training.
A Carmelite take on the abuse scandals
At Catholic Stand, Fr Nicholas Blackwell offered a distinctive take on the Church’s troubles. “As a Carmelite Friar,” he said, he was often asked “if the Church is going through a ‘dark night’ as taught by St John of the Cross.”
St John describes a dark night of the senses and a second, rarer dark night – of the spirit. Both work to purify the soul, by removing it from attachments. In both cases, the soul experiences a painful bitterness.
Could this be an image for the Church? Fr Blackwell had his doubts. St John uses “personalistic” language, so “it is hard to say that the Church as an institution is in a dark night”. Moreover, the “dark night” only begins once a soul has given up mortal sin, whereas the present crisis has a lot to do with the ongoing presence of mortal sin in the Church.
“However,” Fr Blackwell wrote, “I do believe the Church is going through a purgation, that is, a time of purification demanded by God and made concrete through the actions of the Church’s leadership and lay faithful.”
✣✣ Meanwhile…
✣ American actor Mark Wahlberg gets up to pray even earlier than Pope Francis. The Hollywood star posted a gruelling daily schedule on his Instagram account. According to the post, he wakes up at 2.30am and prays for half an hour from 2.45am – significantly earlier than Pope Francis’s reported rise at 4am. The Hollywood star claimed he started the routine in preparation for the film Mile 22, where he plays a CIA operative, and decided to stick with it. The schedule involves two gym sessions lasting a total of two and a half hours and a bedtime of 7.30pm.
Wahlberg told the Guardian in 2016: “Everything good that has happened to me in my life, whether it’s meeting my wife or the births of my children, happened when I started focusing on my faith.”
✣ Bishop Richard Moth of Arundel and Brighton has jumped out of a plane for charity. The bishop took part in a charity skydive alongside another volunteer, Lucy Barnes. They raised more than £5,000 to help sick and disabled pilgrims go to Lourdes. Ms Barnes said: “It was very cold at 15,000ft and the one minute of freefall made my head spin, but gently drifting down with the parachute open was fantastic as you could see everything.”
✣The week in quotations
The Church is looking at its own 9/11 Archbishop Georg Gänswein on the abuse crisis CNS
The first two or three people who arrive, they’re taken away, they’re beaten Fr Edwin Román Calderón on repression of protests in Nicaragua CNS
The Moth has landed Diocese’s reaction to Bishop Moth’s charity skydive Twitter
I’m kind of embarrassed to be a Catholic Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s mother on her reaction to the scandals Interview with the cardinal on CNN
✣Statistic of the week
48% Proportion of Americans who say they have a favourable view of Pope Francis Source: CNN
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