Year of Faith: Evangelical Catholicism

Following everything which Father O’Mahoney had presented to us on the New Evangelisation, we provide an extract from a new book by George Weigel, who wrote the authorised biography of the late Pope (now Blessed) John Paul II.

BEYOND THE CHURCH OF THE COUNTER REFORMATION

The Catholic Church is on the threshold of a bold new era in its 2000 year history. As the curtain comes down on the Church defined by the 16th Century Counter-Reformation, the curtain is rising on the Evangelical Catholicism of the third millennium: a way of being Catholic rooted in over a century of Catholic reform; a mission-centred renewal honed by the Second Vatican Council and given compelling expression by Blessed John Paul II  and Pope Benedict XVI.

The Gospel-centred Evangelical Catholicism of the future will send all the people of the Church into mission territory every day – a territory increasingly defined  in the West by spiritual boredom and aggressive secularism.

Confronting both these cultural challenges and shadows cast by recent Catholic history, Evangelical Catholicism unapologetically proclaims the gospel of Jesus Christ as the truth of the world. It moulds disciples who witness to faith, hope and love by the quality of their lives and the nobility of their aspirations.

The Catholicism of the 21st century and beyond will be a culture forming counterculture, offering all men and women of goodwill a deeply humane alternative to the soul-stifling, self-absorption of many people in this post modern world.

The Counter Reformation Church, which sought to preserve Catholicism through simple straightforward catechetical instruction and devotional piety may well have been a necessity in the centuries between the fracturing of Western Catholicism in the mid-sixteenth century stretching into the cultural triumph of modernity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – but it was not a form of Catholicism that could successfully met the full challenge of modernity.

To met the full challenge of the modern world, more is required of Catholics than to memorise the catechism and to wear the Miraculous medal. Pope Leo XIII knew this and, at the beginning of the twentieth century, he began the process by which Counter Reformation Catholicism could be supplanted. Now, in the first decades of the twenty-first century, there is the emergence of Catholicism born from a new Pentecost, a new outpouring of missionary energy for a new historical and cultural moment.

There are signs of this outpouring of missionary energy in our parish!

Readers in our Parish Liturgies

Four young people have now come forward to serve as readers in our Parish Liturgies:

  1. Anna Fegan, for the Vigil Mass on Saturday

  2. Catilin McPhillie, who is already in place for 11:30 Mass

  3. Daniel Keenan and Sarah Jane Woods for Sunday evening Mass.

Sacramental preparation

Looking forward through the school year, we will invite parents of those children who will be engaged in celebrating the three Sacraments: First Reconciliation, First Holy Communion and Confirmation, to examine and understand much better the need to join with our community in prayer - especially Mass on Sunday - and sol live out their faith.

Without this, arranging the celebration of the Sacraments by their children becomes merely a gesture, a glance in the direction of God, the contradiction of what Catholic faith really is.

Amy Keenan

The Parish has promised to financially assist Amy Keenan, one of our young parishioners and a Eucharistic Minister, when she will carry out construction work next summer in Africa. Now, we congratulate Amy who, having won the Hammermen of Glasgow Award at Langside College in April 2013, then competed with all the Hammermen winners in the colleges within the former Strathclyde reqion for the Colleges’ Prince Philip Award. Amy won that ward too and is also a finalist for the Plastic Industry Awards Apprentice of the Year, 2013.

The winner will be announced in London at the PIA dinner in September. She is using her prize money to meet her travel costs to Africa.

This is an example of the New Evangelisation – a sense of personal encounter with Jesus, not leading Amy and other young people like Amy within the Parish and the Church, into religious life but into living out her faith in practical work in pastoral ministry for the good of others.

Deacon John McGarry

Deacon John will act as co-ordinator for visits to those parishioners who are sick or elderly and being cared for at home or in hospital or in a place of care. He will also co-ordinate visits by Ministers of the Eucharist and be members of the Society of St Vincent de Paul, the Legion of Mary and by himself as Deacon and by the parish priest.

Deacon John will remain involved in the RCIA team and be engaged with the music ministry in addition to continuing and developing his role in leading liturgies in the parish including the Baptism, Marriage and Funeral Liturgies.

Lay Readers of the Word and Distribution of Holy Communion

This is a very important element in nourishing the spiritual life within the Parish. The leaders will be consistently guided in deepening their knowledge of both Scripture and Church Teaching (Tradition) as well as their life in prayer so that they can serve the parish community with confidence and always with a sense of God’s will.

Our Ministers of the Eucharist will be invited to examine their sacred ministry and to see it ever more clearly as one of love and service.