Mass Report (A.K.A. Mass is Boring)

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Mass Report (A.K.A. Mass is Boring)

1timspalding
Editado: Abr 17, 2017, 10:11 am

We've long used the "Mass is Boring" thread to talk about our recent mass experiences. I love reading these, so I've continued it!

My Easter Experience.

I'm on a small, unbridged Irish Island (pop. 200, plus tourists). Usually they have mass on Saturday, but they snagged a priest for Sunday (and Saturday). Saturday was dead—only a handful there. Sunday was mostly full.

The priest is Irish, but his whole career was in rural Canada--he only moved back to Ireland to retire. In conversation, he revealed that he thought the Irish church was dead. The added it was 50 years behind Canada and the US and specifically cited lay responsibility--people think church is the priest's job, and that's that.

It goes to the large question of Irish Catholicism, which is declining rapidly--both from the various scandals and from the fact that, whatever it's paper piety in day's gone by, it didn't succeed in convincing the people of the most basic truths of the faith. When the social pressure and moralism took a hit, the whole thing fell apart. That's my read anyway. The church here will, indeed, need to get a lot smaller before it can grow again. And until the church thoroughly investigates, exposes and roots out its past evils--and attitudes which continue--it has a millstone around its neck.

Anyway, my son and I had missed both mass and confession the week before, so I asked if he we could receive the sacrament. He actually thought we were joking. Then he explained that in his mainland parish he usually does only one confession per week--"We've solved the problem of sin in Ireland!" as he put it. He was, however, an excellent confessor. His only flaw was telling me to Google and reflect on a quote by mother Theresa which, I think, is really by a Methodist (ha!). My son also reported it was great--as a parent I really worry a bad confession experience will sour him on it.

The mass itself was basic--the island has no choir. Honestly, I'd chuck the responsorial psalm if it can't be sung. Also, don't say "Response!" -- just wait for people to response. Or raise an arm up, or whatever. "Response!" sounds really dumb. :)

The priest did say one thing that stuck with me--a good one-liner. He said "Don't just say you believe in Jesus Christ. Say 'I take him seriously.'" Fair point.

2John5918
Editado: Abr 17, 2017, 10:55 am

Thanks, Tim, for starting this new thread.

"Don't just say you believe in Jesus Christ. Say 'I take him seriously.'" Fair point.

A lot of conversations might be simpler if we ditched the word "believe" in this context.

3timspalding
Abr 17, 2017, 10:50 am

How was yours?

4John5918
Editado: Abr 17, 2017, 11:48 am

Peaceful, spent in Kenya, with plenty of exposure to God in nature - the Great Rift Valley, hippos, wildebeest, zebra, waterbuck, gazelle, baboons, monkeys, birds including two species of eagle - and family.

Not much to say about Easter services, really. I don't enjoy the two nearest parishes, both run by an Italian missionary order, both huge and impersonal, not very inspiring homilies. Of a Sunday we normally go to a small missionary chapel (a different, non-Italian missionary order, a very small and intimate mass and very good homilies) but unfortunately that wasn't an option over Easter.

On a slightly different note, I helped draft the South Sudan Council of Church's Easter message, and my Catholic roots came to the fore as I used a few words of the Exultet as the heading, "This is the night when Christ broke the prison bars of death and rose victorious from the underworld... O truly blessed night, when things of heaven are wed to those of earth, and divine to human". I find the Exultet, if well sung (which it usually isn't), is the most beautiful and moving part of the Easter Vigil liturgy. I always used to enjoy proclaiming it. A couple of months ago I found myself in a workshop with a young newly-ordained deacon, still fresh and proud of the liturgical tasks he is able to perform, and we had a long conversation about the Exultet. I'd like to think I gave him a little encouragement to practice it and reflect on his privilege of proclaiming it.

5timspalding
Abr 17, 2017, 11:14 am

Facebook like button. :)

6John5918
Abr 17, 2017, 11:18 am

Incidentally my post reminds me of a phrase you have used from time to time to suggest that the simplest and most obvious explanation is probably the most likely (Occam's Razor?), "If you hear hoofbeats, expect to see horses, not zebra". I have pointed out from time to time that in my case, as yesterday on Easter Sunday, it is usually the opposite!

7timspalding
Abr 17, 2017, 11:34 am

>6 John5918:

Doctors use that a lot. Along with "it's never lupus" :)

8timspalding
Editado: Abr 30, 2017, 5:17 pm

Man, get me off this Irish island.

My son and I went to mass yesterday. It was 0:37 minutes long. It was so rushed the priest went on with the mass before the gifts arrived--causing some uncertainty when the guy approached the altar, which was well into the consecration, with the money. We're on a tiny Irish island, with little to do. Ferry schedules require the priest spend six hours on the island no matter what. But mass is a mumbled rush.

It's clearer than ever to me that Irish Catholicism is screwed. The old harsh social pressures and harsh theologies are gone. Nobody has to go to mass, and, apart from a dwindling elderly group, nobody will go unless they get something out of it. That something ought to be time and space to connect with God and your fellow Christians. But, for what I can see, that's not much of a thing here.

They're screwed.

9John5918
Editado: mayo 1, 2017, 1:43 am

>8 timspalding:

Old Irish Catholic joke - the announcements at the end of mass:

"Next Sunday's masses will be at six, six tirty, seven, seven tirty, eight, eight tirty, nine, nine tirty, ten, ten tirty, eleven, eleven tirty, twelve, twelve tirty," (pauses for breath), "four, four tirty, five, five tirty, six, and six tirty".

They've reduced the number of masses but haven't changed the length of the mass!

I've attended rushed Sunday masses in Ireland such as you describe which were less than thirty minutes (including homily and Nicene Creed), and also in Spain.

On the other hand I've attended many daily masses, usually for small groups (and not in Ireland!), where the mass is only twenty minutes or so yet felt relaxed, peaceful, prayerful, reflective and unhurried. In these cases there has been careful discernment of what can be omitted, and there is no excess verbiage from priest or people.

10LivelyLady
mayo 1, 2017, 12:04 pm

Tim, I wonder if the experience of Catholicism and the Mass is more reflective of society in general and not in your region? What has replaced religion in peoples' lives?

11justanotherjohn
mayo 5, 2017, 3:10 pm

In the United States, sport. The NFL in particular has taken the pride of place of Sunday activities.

12vpfluke
mayo 5, 2017, 3:30 pm

As an Episcopalian and now singing as a non-paid member of a Manhattan choir, and with only one 90 minute rehearsal a week, mass is never boring. (We did have two extra rehearsals to get through Holy Week: Tenebrae, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Vigil, Easter Sunday). We sometimes skip really rehearsing a hymn, because after the director has heard 6-8 measure, he deems that we really know it. I sometimes protest, as I can't sight-read the tenor part and walk in procession at the same time.

13John5918
mayo 6, 2017, 2:03 am

This morning I had a 24-minute mass, but not the type referred to by Tim. I'm staying in a religious community this week. There were only five of us, two women and three men, representing laity, sisters and priests, sitting around the coffee table in the living room. The presider is a visiting former superior general who now heads a national church office in a European country. He wore a stole but no other vestments. The readings, including the gospel, were shared amongst us. There was a homily, prayers of the faithful, and the sign of peace. Communion was taken under both kinds, of course, with host and chalice passed around from hand to hand. The mass was relaxed, unhurried, reflective, prayerful, respectful. Nothing was omitted, but there was nothing extraneous either. A blessed experience.

14timspalding
mayo 6, 2017, 7:28 am

>13 John5918:

That sounds great. What parts does one drop to make it so short, though--24 minutes doesn't seem enough time to intone the words.

15John5918
mayo 6, 2017, 8:15 am

>14 timspalding:

Actually nothing was dropped. Wherever there was an option the shortest form was used, eg the penitential rite. Prayers such as the Our Father were begun without an introduction. I think the biggest saving is in not adding anything; it's amazing how much extra verbiage is added by presiders (and even readers) without us really noticing. Also, because we all remained seated close together there was no time lost moving around.

16timspalding
mayo 6, 2017, 9:28 am

>15 John5918:

Lovely.

We had mass today and it was the first really good, spiritually fulfilling mass I've had in Ireland. The priest was a new one, off the rotation, apparently. It was still short--clearly under an hour, although I didn't check. But he spoke a little slower that others, and with human intonation and evident meaning. This produced the odd effect of the priest always being a phrase or two behind the congregation, who were used to plowing along at full pace. The homily was good, on our gifts and vocations, borrowing liberally from St. Paul on the different parts of the body (in Corinthians) without attribution, which is, I suppose, entirely fair for a priest :)

17John5918
Editado: Ene 7, 2023, 2:37 am

Mass this morning at a Salesian parish on the outskirts of Juba. It's a massive compound, 2 km x 2 km, with church, schools, clinic, vocational training, agriculture, priests, sisters, brothers, volunteers, etc - it reminds me rather of the old completely self-sufficient mission stations I used to encounter in the old days. After mass we had lunch with the Salesian community.

The church is a neat and businesslike structure, holding maybe 400, and it was full for the English mass which we attended. The presider was a missionary priest visiting from England. Two South Sudanese priests concelebrated with him, the Vice-Chancellor of the Catholic University of South Sudan (who was my student 30 years ago - he proudly tells everybody that I taught him English) and the Director of our newly-built Good Shepherd Peace Centre (a spiritual centre for retreats, peacebuilding, trauma healing, reconciliation, etc). The latter was the homilist, preaching a good workmanlike eight-minute homily. The singing, all in English, was good. The readings and prayers of the faithful were read clearly and intelligently by young men and women. Mass would have been over in one hour except for the announcements and then some time spent welcoming the visiting priest and his colleague and allowing them to say a few words.

One unusual announcement was instructing people not to start cultivating on church land without permission; if you want to plant crops in the church compound, register with the Parish Cultivation Committee and a plot will be allocated to you. The background to this is that there are eighteen thousand people who have been displaced from their homes by violence sheltering in the church compound. The parish priest, a dynamic Indian, is struggling to find funds to feed them, and so they are being encouraged to grow their own food - but only with parish permission!

People flock to churches for protection when they are targeted by violence. Here are two recent articles about another town in South Sudan, Wau:

Hungry, scared South Sudanese stay in cathedral compound for protection

Residents say South Sudan troops remove 5,000 from church

The parish priest was telling us that recently 70 armed soldiers cut through the fence and started harassing the displaced people on the grounds that they were looking for rebels - an unlikely story given that almost all of them are women and children, plus some elderly and blind men. He stood up to the soldiers. This morning he had been driving a pregnant woman to hospital when soldiers at a road block forced her to get out of the car, on the same grounds that they are checking for rebels, and she began giving birth on the spot. Once again he stood up to them, at gunpoint, and they eventually allowed him to rush her to hospital. He still managed to do three masses this morning in three different outstations up to 39 km away, including one where soldiers at a road block advised him not to go as ten* people had been killed in an ambush on that road just a couple of days ago. He went anyway. He himself was robbed at gunpoint just a few kms from his mission a couple of weeks ago.

Normal daily life in our part of the world.

* Edited to add: Later reports put the death toll as high as thirty.

18John5918
mayo 8, 2017, 1:26 am

Another very short but unhurried mass this morning. Again just five of us, in the chapel of a missionary guest house.

19John5918
mayo 15, 2017, 7:50 am

Yesterday we went to the evening mass at Consolata Shrine in Nairobi. Not my favourite church - looks a bit like a London bus garage with a German WWII machine gun tower stuck on it - lots of boring grey concrete.

I have no idea how long the homily was as my watch has broken and I turn my mobile phone off when I go to church, but it probably wasn't outrageously long, although it was unmemorable. The clock on the dashboard of my Land Rover told me that the whole mass was about 70 minutes. A good ten minutes of that was the priest trying to persuade us to contribute more to the parish building project. His introductions to prayers were ad-libbed and were too long.

Singing was mediocre. They sang the Ggaba mass, named after the seminary and pastoral centre where it was composed. It's one of my favourites. I was in East Africa around the time it was written, but I know from hearing it sung fresh at the time that it is supposed to be sung much quicker than they generally sing it nowadays. The presider sang some of the prayers, which wasn't too clever given the tinny and over-loud sound system.

Readings were done well, the second one by a young lady with an impressive British accent. However the lectors wore albs, one of my pet hates - reading is a lay ministry and the readers should be dressed as laity, not pseudo-priests. To their credit they had lay ministers of the Eucharist, but they too wore albs, as, indeed, did the folk who passed the collection plates around.

They had incense at the mass, something which is very common here. I would rather omit it at, say, the early morning and the evening masses and just have it at main masses or special occasions.

20John5918
Jul 16, 2017, 6:00 pm

I'm in the USA, travelling with one of our Sudanese bishops. This weekend we found ourselves in Cincinnati, staying with the Comboni missionaries. One of our young South Sudanese priests, only two years ordained, is in a nearby parish for the weekend, and we went there this morning for our bishop to preside and preach at the mid-morning mass.

It was a very new church, less than one year old, very neat looking, with clean lines, and pretty big and impressive. Despite its modernity it also had quite a traditional look, with classical stained glass windows. The grounds are spacious, looking even more so as it is right next to a suburban housing development which has its own ornamental lake which at first glance looks as if it is part of the church property.

Singing was competent without being a performance, which I rather liked, and the congregation joined in. The hymns were a bit too folksy-from-a-certain-era for me, but I enjoyed the sung ordinary of the mass, a well written modern setting. There was a very nice pipe organ, something you don't see in too many modern parish churches.

I have no idea how long the homily was as I still don't have a watch, but the bishop spoke extremely well and had the congregation in the palm of his hand. I've often seen him preach for an hour in Sudan, but today it was nearer ten minutes than sixty, as he is well aware of US concern about time.

One thing that really struck me was how few people received communion under both kinds. I would say it was less than one in ten. I'm aware of plenty of parishes in the world where it is not even offered, but wherever I have seen it offered I would say that the take-up rate is usually at least 50%.

21timspalding
Jul 16, 2017, 6:02 pm

>20 John5918:

Huh. It's at least 75% where I am. I wonder… germophobia?

22John5918
Editado: Jul 16, 2017, 6:07 pm

Yes, I'm more used to 75% than 10%.

232wonderY
Jul 16, 2017, 6:19 pm

Which parish in Cinci? Daughter just moved there and I, at least, will be looking for a Sunday Mass.

24John5918
Editado: Jul 17, 2017, 3:40 pm

>23 2wonderY:

It's a few miles outside the city, in Andersen, I think. St Mary of the Assumption or something similar. Masses at 8 and 10.30 am and also Saturday and Sunday evenings.

Correction: I think it might be Springborough (spelling?); Anderson might be where I am staying.

25John5918
Jul 30, 2017, 1:44 pm

Two more masses that spring to mind in July.

Just before I left USA my Sudanese bishop presided at a weekday lunchtime Eucharist at the USCCB office. Our first surprise was that out of 300+ staff, only 20 came to mass (I don't say that judgementally, merely an observation). Then it seems the regular priest hadn't been informed, so his nose seemed to have been put a bit out of joint. He told the bishop that he had already prepared a homily, so the bishop invited him to preach. Turns out his homily was just reading a paragraph from St John Chrysostom. I suspect the punters in the pews might have preferred to hear from a visiting Sudanese bishop. Anyway, the bishop managed to say a few words at the beginning of mass and still to finish in the regulation half hour.

This weekend I'm in England, attending the fortieth wedding anniversary of a couple of my old university friends in Durham. We had a little Anglican service yesterday in the 16th century Tunstal Chapel where they originally got married, and we also spent a few minutes in the Norman undercroft chapel where we used to have compline when we were undergraduates.

This morning I went for Sunday mass at the Catholic church which I used to attend all those years ago. It was a nice middle of the road English Catholic mass. With about 120 punters in the pews it felt comfortably full but not overcrowded in the Victorian-era church. The young priest was a good speaker who preached a competent homily of a good length. Singing was good but not a performance, with the congregation joining in well. We had the sheet music for the mass, a modern setting but not folksy. The altar servers were three teenagers and one adult, male and female, with no little kiddies. Communion under both kinds was well patronised, and we had incense as this was the main mass of the day. All in all a good experience. I had a chat with the priest afterwards and he promised to put me back in touch with the priest who had been the curate when I was there, now retired and not too well - I had remained in touch with him for many years but lost contact a decade or so ago.

Yesterday evening we went to Anglican evensong in Durham Cathedral, which to my mind is the most magnificent cathedral in the world, not only because of its own attributes but also because of its position on a hill overlooking the river. It also has the bodies of two great British saints, Cuthbert and Bede. Evensong was very Anglican. I didn't really appreciate the music, a typically discordant modern setting, but it was well sung by a choir from Texas, of all places. The service was led by a minor canon who looked grim-faced during the entire proceedings.

26John5918
Ago 11, 2017, 3:47 am

A weekday mass a couple of days ago at the UK HQ of the Pontifical Mission Societies. I had been invited to give a talk to the staff, as they are using South Sudan as the main focus of their mission week appeal later this year. Earlier this year I had hosted the director and one of his colleagues on a visit to the country.

It happened to be the feast of Edith Stein, aka St Teresa Benedicta, and he gave a good little homily on the courage of ordinary people such as her in conflicts all over the world, including South Sudan. About a third of the staff pitched up at the small and simple chapel for the lunchtime mass, which was quiet and reflective and lasted about half an hour.

27margd
Editado: Oct 9, 2017, 6:43 am

In immediate days after disaster, churches, schools and community groups such as Salvation Army, who know their people and have small-d distribution networks can provide relief before big-G government efforts arrive: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/10/08/aid-makes-needy-hurric...

Below is touching story of how local church is focus for restoring some sense of normality and thus helping this mountain community in Puerto Rico come together. Article has short video of church, Mass, parishioners:

A light amid the darkness, a Puerto Rico church stands up as its community struggles
Arelis R. Hernández | October 7, 2017

...(Our Lady of Monte Carmelo) “is the only light I’ve seen in the midst of all this darkness,” (Carmen Ortiz ) said.

...Local officials estimate that nearly every state road in Coanillas and greater Utuado were impassable or collapsed after the hurricane. No homes were left completely untouched in this region of the Central mountain range...

...No matter how bad one has it, there is always someone worse off and in need of an “Ay bendito” — a common refrain of compassion here in Puerto Rico...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/a-light-amid-the-darkness-a-puerto-rico-...

28John5918
Editado: Oct 10, 2017, 4:05 am

I'm in Rome this week with the same Sudanese bishop I mentioned in >25 John5918:. We're at the Caritas Internationalis HQ, meeting some of our funding partners for the pastoral and humanitarian programmes which we are running in the Nuba Mountains war zone of Sudan, so I suppose there is a connection to >27 margd:.

Mass this morning was in the Caritas chapel, presided by our bishop with a South Sudanese priest concelebrating. By chance today is the feast of St Daniel Comboni, a fortuitous coincidence as Comboni is often called the Apostle of Sudan, and our bishop is himself a Comboni missionary. A couple of dozen people were present, including the Secretary General of Caritas. A little singing (in English, French and Italian), a good and relatively short homily from the bishop, and generally a good experience.

A little good news - today in the midst of the Nuba Mountains war zone a group of local teachers is graduating from our teacher training college after a three year course. It's a reminder that our work is not just short-term disaster response but is long term. Twenty years ago when I was directly managing humanitarian operations we used to call it a "long-term complex emergency"; now I believe the current jargon is "protracted crisis". Fads change when it comes to terminology, but the problem remains the same.

29John5918
Oct 11, 2017, 3:17 am

Next day, same chapel, same bishop. No singing as we couldn't find the hymn sheets. The feast of Pope St John XXIII, one of my favourite saints, not only for triggering Vatican II but also for Pacem in terris.

A smaller group today as our meeting is drawing to a close and some people have already travelled or are preparing to travel. We have people here from Australia, Canada, Brazil, Kenya, Sudan, South Sudan and many parts of Europe. Our funding comes from even further afield, including Korea and Japan.

30John5918
Dic 25, 2017, 4:42 am

Christmas morning. A handful of old friends sitting on the veranda of a private house overlooking the African savanna. No currently-active priests, but two former priests and their wives were present. A simple mass around a coffee table, communion a slice of brown bread and an Australian shiraz. Someone shared a reflection on how simple things ought to be ("In the beginning was the Word") and yet how complicated religion has become. A couple of Christmas carols, the "Peruvian" Gloria, and a plainchant Alleluia. Beautiful.

Go back three weeks or so and I was in Juba, South Sudan, and managed to get to mass five times in one week, very rare for me. The Second Sunday of Advent was in a missionary chapel which gets fifty or sixty people on Sundays. The Italian theology professor who presided writes his own music for the proper of the mass and it can at times be a bit of a one-man show, but most of us know the tunes now so the congregation sings lustily. Then I was staying at a Catholic church peace centre for three days, about fifteen kms outside Juba. So peaceful, with a cool breeze, but it's the time of year when people burn off the old crops before planting anew, so we were surrounded by bush fires, some of them coming very close. We were watching the TV news of the wildfires in Calilfornia at the same time, but we had natural firebreaks and cool breezes rather than hot gales, so we were never in any danger. A different priest each day, a Philippino, a Ugandan and an Irishman. The latter was the loudest, the most animated and the briefest! Perhaps also the most pragmatic, the most spiritual, the most personal and the most moving. Then on my way home I stayed a night in Nairobi at another missionary guest house, and we had a short and simple mass on the Saturday mornning, just three of us, a priest, a lay missionary and myself (well, I suppose I am also a lay missionary).

31timspalding
Dic 25, 2017, 5:41 am

Merry Christmas John. More later, after sleep!

32John5918
Dic 25, 2017, 10:13 am

>31 timspalding:

Thanks, Tim. Likewise a happy and holy Christmas season and a peaceful and blessed new year to you and yours. Enjoy the sleep!

332wonderY
Dic 25, 2017, 1:01 pm

We're still checking out the wonderful variety of churches in Cincinnati. Yesterday's Sunday mass we went to St. Lawrence. The architecture and the Christmas decorations were gorgeous. But the priest raced through so fast my grands couldn't understand a word, we skipped some of the standard music, and congregation was out the door again within 32 minutes. Nope, no thanks.

Today, daughter and grand went to St. William with me, right around the corner from their new home. I'd been encouraging her to check it out. She was blown away by the interior, the music, the priest's welcoming, the Mass itself. Score!

I gave my heathen daughter Mere Christianity today and asked her to give back by reading it and meditating on it. She says yes with willingness.

34John5918
Editado: Ene 10, 2018, 11:36 am

In Nairobi for a meeting of the church personnel from the Nuba Mountains war zone, where my old friend the retired Sudanese bishop still oversees pastoral, education, health and humanitarian programmes. Evening mass in the chapel of the sisters' retreat and conference centre where we are staying. There were forty to fifty people at mass, roughly one third laity, one third religious sisters and brothers, and one third priests. The spoken part of the mass plus the hymns were in English, the Proclamation of Faith and the Lord's Prayer were sung in Arabic, and the Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus and Agnus Dei sung in Kiswahili. The multinational gathering included people from Sudan, South Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, Eritrea, the Netherlands, Australia, Ireland, Germany, Poland and UK.

Speaking of retired bishops, another old bishop who had been my friend and mentor for 35 years died a couple of days ago in Khartoum, aged 80-something. He was my diocesan bishop when I first went to Sudan. RIP.

35John5918
Ene 14, 2018, 3:32 am

A week of daily masses as described in >34 John5918:, then yesterday we had a requiem mass in Nairobi, presided by the living retired bishop mentioned above (a mere youngster at 79) for the dead retired bishop also mentioned above. Bishop Emeritus Vincent Mojwok Nyiker died in Khartoum a week or so ago aged 85. His body was repatriated to Juba, the capital of South Sudan, after the President of the Republic of South Sudan, himself a Catholic and former parishioner of the late bishop, gave instructions to all government officials that they should facilitate the return of the body. There was a requiem mass in Juba, and then the body was flown to Malakal, the seat of Bishop Vincent's diocese, for burial in the grounds of the cathedral that he built.

The requiem mass held in Nairobi was for the South Sudanese diaspora in Kenya. Half a dozen priests concelebrated, one of them the vicar general of the late bishop's old diocese, who happens to be in Kenya for further studies, and two being Mill Hill Missionaries who had previously worked in the diocese. An Italian Comboni Sister who had worked in the diocese in the 1950s was also present, still hale and hearty at 89 years old. The bishop's own Collo (Shilluk) tribe was well represented, with many of them wearing traditional dress. A Collo elder gave a short tribute at the end of mass. The mass was in English but parts were also in Arabic. A group of little girls sang a song after communion - it was clear from the way they pronounced certain words ("beaudiful"!) that they had learned it from a US recording!

A South Sudanese priest from a different diocese who is currently teaching at the Catholic University of East Africa in Nairobi read a eulogy. It was impressive to remember what the late bishop had achieved against great odds during three civil wars - that generation of bishops, priests, brothers, catechists and sisters in Sudan were truly pioneers. The late bishop is universally described as holy, humble and simple (in the best sense of that word). I think it broke his heart when he was finally forced to leave his diocese early in 2014 during the latest civil war, the first time he had ever left his flock in times of trouble. As the town changed hands three or four times, each time accompanied by the slaughter of civilians from whichever side happened to have lost that particular round of the battle, he fearlessly sheltered people of all tribes and factions in his compound, while the town literally burned around him. It was only when a fresh round of fighting was followed by the deliberate massacre of his own tribe that several of his younger priests persuaded him to flee, as he carries very distinctive and unmistakeable tribal scars and would almost certainly have been murdered. His escape involved standing up to his neck in the Nile for several hours with bullets splashing around him, supported by his young priests, and then lying flat on a small island during the night, still with rebels shooting at them. Eventually a small boat ferried them across the Nile, and then he had to walk through the forest for several days until the bishop of the neighbouring diocese was able to send a vehicle to rescue him. When I met him shortly afterwards he still hadn't lost his dry sense of humour and remarked wryly that he wished he'd eaten a bigger breakfast that morning as they hadn't had any food for the next few days.

Elsewhere I wrote, "He will be sorely missed by many. He was a wise and spiritual pastor who was happiest when he was with his people on the ground in Malakal and the surrounding area. He was never in the limelight and is relatively unknown to the wider world, which is probably just as he would have liked it. RIP."

36margd
Editado: Mar 29, 2018, 6:04 am

I can just see the busybodies correcting their pewmates--and maybe driving away someone who didn't get the memo... (Holding hands for the Lord's Prayer is common--almost universal--practice in at least one previous parish of mine.) Swatting at gnats...

The Faithful Are NOT To Use the Orans Posture During the Our Father
Jason Izolt | 10/30/2016

A discussion that is common in Catholic parishes between the more orthodox members of the parish and the more “progressive” members is whether or not the faithful should use the Orans Posture during the Our Father.

...Instruction On Certain Questions Regarding the Collaboration of the Non-Ordained Faithful in the Sacred Ministry of Priests, put out by the Vatican on August 15, 1997, we read,

"In eucharistic celebrations deacons and non-ordained members of the faithful may not pronounce prayers — e.g. especially the eucharistic prayer, with its concluding doxology — or any other parts of the liturgy reserved to the celebrant priest. Neither may deacons or non-ordained members of the faithful use gestures or actions which are proper to the same priest celebrant. It is a grave abuse for any member of the non-ordained faithful to "quasi preside" at the Mass while leaving only that minimal participation to the priest which is necessary to secure validity" (ICP Practical Provisions 6 §2).

What the above statement means is that we may not say the Eucharistic prayers along with the priest — believe it or not, I see people mouthing the words along with the priest every week. More importantly to this topic, this also means the faithful may not use the same gestures that are reserved for the priest celebrant.

...the Orans Posture (and subsequently, holding hands) is not an appropriate gesture for the faithful during the Our Father...

http://www.catholic365.com/article/5408/the-faithful-are-not-to-use-the-orans-po...

37John5918
Mar 29, 2018, 12:40 am

>36 margd: A discussion that is common in Catholic parishes between the more orthodox members of the parish and the more “progressive” members is whether or not the faithful should use the Orans Posture during the Our Father.

I can't say I've really ever come across that "discussion" - in my experience people just get on with it. Using the "Orans Posture" (first time I've ever heard that term!), ie praying with the hands outstretched and palms upwards, is very common, and holding hands is not uncommon.

That website looks to be pretty biased, representing the narrative of one fringe of the church. Even the use of the term "orthodox" in that context is, I think, a code word used by certain groups of disaffected Catholics who wish to claim the higher moral ground.

Where I live people don't tend to join in the Eucharistic Prayer with the priest, but it's very common for the priest to invite the people to join in the prayer for peace after the Our Father, "Lord Jesus Christ, who said to your Apostles, peace I leave you, my peace I give you..." In countries which are suffering so much war and violence it is perhaps natural for there to be this added emphasis on peace. The exchanging of the sign of peace is also taken very seriously because it is very real and meaningful. It takes a lot longer than I have seen in many European and north American parishes, with more movement, and is often accompanied by a hymn of peace before the Agnus Dei is sung.

38margd
Editado: Mar 29, 2018, 6:54 am

>37 John5918: The exchanging of the sign of peace... takes a lot longer than I have seen in many European and North American parishes, with more movement

I'll never forget the amazement on a new priest's face when he invited exchange of peace at my kids' school Mass (Michigan). The students sought out friends and family members in other pews, and it took a bit for them to finish and rejoin their classmates. Different, indeed, from Sunday Mass! :)

39John5918
Editado: Ago 8, 2018, 12:28 pm

Our big "mass report" news is that we have now found a church where there is mass in English a reasonable driving distance from our new house. It's on the outskirts of a bustling town (which a few years ago was just a small trading post), about 35 km from home, which is around an hour in the dry season and could be twice that long during the rains. It's a large-ish octagonal church, a design which was very popular in Kenya during the closing decades of the last century. Each Sunday the community from one of the parish's Small Christian Communities takes care of the mass. The priest was a visitor from Nairobi, but he indicated that he would be moving to the diocese and coming more regularly on Sundays. He was OK, but tended to add too many words of his own for my taste, and he was a bit charismatic. At the end of the mass he advertised CDs of music he has written and performed. He began his homily by telling us that it would be short because the choir had to get to another function, but when they start off saying it will be short, usually it isn't, and this was no exception. I wasn't over-impressed by the content, but he was a good speaker, using stories, jokes and anecdotes, with the occasionial song, and the people were certainly paying attention. The hymns were all in Kiswahili, and parts of the ordinary of the mass were sung in English and Kiswahili. There's a decent hotel next to the church, so after the 8 o'clock mass finishes at 9.45 am we go for breakfast there.

Apart from that most of the masses I've attended in the last few months, both Sundays and weekdays, have been in religious houses, my usual one where I stay when I'm in Nairobi, and then the one I stayed in when I was accompanying one of my retired Sudanese bishops to Washington DC.

I also managed to attend a parish mass in Cincinnati one Sunday, in a parish called Bethel. They had done a good job of extending a small old church without spoiling its character. My bishop was presiding and preaching, although it wasn't a mission appeal so we didn't get any funding from that one. He has learned that people in the USA like short homilies, and he preached well. Singing was very good, modern hymns which are not camp-fire-folksy, and a nice mass by Bernadette Farrell, a British liturgical composer, whom I met at a music workshop in London more than 30 years ago. I had a good chat with the choirmaster afterwards, and also with an 80-year old permanent deacon who was down to earth and still full of life. As with most masses in the USA, it felt rather smooth and professional - I've been to masses with more feeling in them.

Then last week I found myself in Trondheim, Norway, at a Lutheran church festival honouring St Olav, a saint/king who is usually depicted with a helm on his head, a cross in one hand and a sword in the other. That's how we converted people in the good old days. Their theme was "Church as Body" and they had a variety of speakers from all over the world exploring different facets of that theme. I was talking about the role of the church in the war zones of Sudan and South Sudan, speaking alongside a Malawian pastor who is involved in justice around extractive industries. The previous day a retired South African Anglican bishop spoke on eco-justice, what we Catholics would probably call "integrity of Creation" or "Creation Spirituality". He was excellent. The day after me three women from various parts of the world spoke about sexual violence, the body as a weapon - one works with Rohynga women, one with women abducted by Boko Haram, and one in the refugee camps of Lebanon. Horrendous stuff, although a lot of it is also recognisable in South Sudan.

I met three bishops - two of them were Norwegian women and the only man was a foreigner, the Anglican from South Africa. Very refreshing. I had good conversations with them. The Bishop of Olso spoke about working with the poor and marginalised, the "church of the body" as opposed to the "church of scripture" (we Catholics might say the "church of doctrine", which is our idol just as the Lutheran church emphasises scripture). Incidentally I also met her husband, who is also a theologian. With the Bishop of Trondheim we had an interesting chat about pilgrimages, as during the last few decades Trondheim has become a pilgrim site. We found we had both done some of the same pilgrimages, including parts of the Camino of Santiago de Compostela in Spain and St Cuthbert's Way on the English-Scottish border. Most of the priests I met were also women, including one who now serves in the cathedral but had recently spent some years working with the church in the Holy Land.

The cathedral is a huge and impressive edifice begun in the 10th century, although it took a couple of hundred years to complete, and is reminiscent of many of the great British cathedrals of that era (except that when the Lutherans took them over in Norway they didn't destroy all the statues as Puritans did in Britain). Each afternoon there was a mass in one of the smaller chapels as part of the festival. It was in Norwegian with some translation into English and German. We were all invited to pray the Lord's Prayer in our own language, something I have always appreciated. The hymns were accompanied by a flautist. On Sunday the festival was over but my flight wasn't until the afternoon so I went to the main mass in the morning. It was in Norwegian but there was an introduction in English, and the mass book had notes in English and German. Singing was superb, of a similar high standard to British Anglican cathedrals. There were only four in the choir, two men and two women, each singing one voice of harmony, without using microphones - the acoustics in some of these old cathedrals are amazing. There are two organs and I think we only heard the smaller, older one. I'd love to have heard the huge newer one at the back of the church. I loved the words they used at the beginning of the mass to invite everyone to receive communion. I can't remember them exactly but it was something like the eucharistic table in the the Lutheran church is open to all who seek God. Final comment on that particular mass is that when we got to the sign of peace I turned to greet the bloke next to me, who was far taller than me and I hadn't even glanced at him until then. I think we both got that feeling that we knew each other, but it was only when we went up to receive communion that we got the chance to really look at each other and we realised that we had worked together on Sudan peace advocacy 20 years ago and had had no contact or news of each other since. To be scriptural, truly we knew each other in the breaking of the bread!

After all these travels I'm now back home in the Kenyan bundu, looking forward to getting up at the crack of dawn next Sunday to go to our newly-found church. We have three visitors (from England, Spain and the USA) staying with us this weekend and it will be nice to go to mass together with them.

402wonderY
Ago 9, 2018, 8:13 am

>39 John5918:

" the eucharistic table in the Lutheran church is open to all who seek God."
I've heard that as well at an Episcopal service. I love it!

Seriously cool to meet an old comrade again in such an unexpected location.

Bethel church in Cincinnati
Do you mean St. Mary, in Bethel, OH? (east of Cinci)
There is an Evangelical Bethel Church of Cincinnati as well.

41John5918
Ago 9, 2018, 1:40 pm

>40 2wonderY:

Yes, I think it was St Mary's, Bethel.

42John5918
Editado: Ago 13, 2018, 1:12 am

Back to our newly-discovered Kenyan parish with our international visitors, and a few more details. On the way to church we saw Thomson's gazelle, zebra and a dead hyena, as well as many birds.

This Sunday we had the parish priest. He was a lot less wordy than the previous presider, his homily was businesslike and relatively short, and the mass was 15 minutes shorter. Mass was in English, with singing in English, Kiswahili and even a Kalenjin hymn. Singing was excellent as usual, with plenty of clapping, ululation, hand waving and body swaying - Africans congregations cannot keep still once the music starts. All the liturgical ministers were women except the priest and a couple of altar boys, with women and girls doing the readings and nuns from a local religious order, the Evangelising Sisters of Mary (whom I know because they also work as missionaries in South Sudan), acting as ministers of the Eucharist. There is a procession with the lectionary before the readings, and when the gifts are brought to the altar it is also a long procession with not only the bread, wine and the cash collection but also fresh fruit and vegetables, maize flour, sugar, cooking oil and other necessities, even including toilet paper. This has been my experience in many parishes in Africa, that the priests are largely able to live off what is brought each Sunday.

Unusually for Kenya this church has big TV screens where the words of the mass and the hymns are displayed. The tabernacle is in the shape of a traditional African house - small, round, with a conical thatched roof.

Just as last week, there were armed police on duty outside the church, a sad measure taken due to the risk of attacks by Al Shabab fighters (although apart from the infamous Westgate Mall attack most of their activities have taken place in the far northeast of the country, not down where we are). This week there were also stewards with metal detectors, although their waving of the wand was very cursory. It beeped two or three times when they ran it over me, between my phone, the Leatherman tool which I always wear on my belt, and my car keys (when you drive a 20-year old Land Rover your car keys represent a significant chunk of metal, with a different key for every door and a collection of padlock keys for all the bits of kit fixed on the outside of the car) and they didn't bat an eyelid.

We will definitely be going to this church pretty regularly.

43John5918
Dic 2, 2018, 11:51 pm

Yesterday, the 1st Sunday of Advent, I found myself in Nairobi, having just flown from South Sudan. I attended Sunday mass in the missionary guest house where I always stay. We were a small group, just thirteen people: a handful of laity, a handful of religious sisters, a handful of priests, a handful of women, a handful of men, a handful of different nationalities, old and young... it struck me that this is a manifestation of the Universal Church.

While I understand of course that apocalyptic writing is not intended to be literal propecy, I have to say that during the gospel reading (Luke 21:25-28) I couldn't help thinking about global climate change...

442wonderY
Dic 25, 2018, 1:24 pm

Two grands tore themselves away from their excessive piles of gifts this morning to accompany me to St. Will’s. We walked over carrying nothing but ourselves. I wished I had thought about how I tear up and should have stashed a handkerchief in a pocket.

Sparsely attended, looks like midnight Mass was the big one. Father gave us a wonderful and nuanced reflection and ceremony. Music was basic but glorious. The church is ornate built upon ornate. Vigorously reflecting the glory of heaven.

45John5918
Mar 6, 2019, 1:35 am

Ash Wednesday. Mass at St Michael's, an outstation chapel of the old parish of St Joseph, in Juba, South Sudan. I've written about St Michael's before. It was an Orthodox church but was handed over to the Catholics when most of the Orthodox left in the 1980s during the last war. It has been extensively renovated and well-maintained by its affluent congregation, which includes many expatriates, aid workers, UN staff and diplomats as well as well-to-do South Sudanese.

There were probably seventy or so people. This morning's mass was prepared by the Kenyan members of the congregation. The religious community I am staying with contributed to the congregation a Marynoll priest from the USA, an Irish Missionary of Africa (aka White Fathers), an Australian De La Salle teaching brother, a sister from the Pacific Islands, and me, a nomadic Briton. From the house next door came Kenyan and Malawian sisters, and from the house behind us, South Sudanese diocesan priests. UN vehicles were parked outside the church. A diocesan priest presided with one colleague concelebrating, and there were several other priests worshipping as part of the congregation. The homily was short but weak. There was too much singing for my taste, but it is very much part of African culture.

When the mass started at 7 am the sun was barely rising, so for the first half of the mass there were solar lamps illuminating the altar and lectern, while mobile phone torches were much in evidence. I suppose my phone has one but I don't know how to turn it on. Someone nearby was having their septic tank pumped out, so the drone of the pump and the scent of ripe sewage added to the mass experience.

I always feel there's a bit of cognitive dissonance between the Gospel reading from Matthew 6, "And when you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by people... But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face..." and the fact that a couple of minutes after listening to these words we proceed to, er, disfigure our faces in a way that everyone can see. I washed my face as soon as I got home.

The last two Sundays i have attended mass in private missionary chapels in two capital cities, Nairobi and Juba.

The Nairobi one is just round the corner from a big parish which has several masses on a Sunday in English and Kiswahili, so only a handful of outsiders come. A quiet meditative mass, only half a dozen or so people present, a short but good homily.

The Juba one effectively serves as a parish church, with as many plastic chairs lined up under the trees outside as there are inside, accommodating maybe 150 people in total, with a portable PA system. Also a very international congregation. Lively singing and drumming led by Kenyan and South Sudanese sisters. Homily limited to 10 minutes, but like the Ash Wednesday one, it didn't make any impression on me.

And with all these masses, a chance to chat to old and new friends after mass.

462wonderY
Mar 6, 2019, 12:52 pm

>45 John5918:

"I always feel there's a bit of cognitive dissonance between the Gospel reading from Matthew 6, "And when you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by people... But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face..." and the fact that a couple of minutes after listening to these words we proceed to, er, disfigure our faces in a way that everyone can see."

True. But in my adult life, I consider wearing the ashes all day as a slight penance, just because hardly anyone else is wearing them. It's a small statement of faith in a secular world. It's a tiny, tiny bit of bravery for my Lord.

472wonderY
Mar 7, 2019, 4:27 pm

Wearing ashes frowned upon in a Utah school:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/utah-teacher-forced-student-to-wash-off-ash-wed...

The teacher was corrected and apologized.

48John5918
Mar 8, 2019, 12:57 am

>46 2wonderY:

Yes, I have no problem wearing ashes as a personal sign of repentance, and a reminder that "thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return". I just think this is the wrong Gospel reading to have at a mass where we are about to do the opposite of what the Gospel reading instructs.

49John5918
Abr 14, 2019, 1:29 am

A week or so ago I was in Rome for a couple of days for a conference on nonviolence organised jointly by the Vatican, through Cardinal Turkson's Dicastery for Integral Human Development, and Pax Christi International.It was a follow up to an initial conference held in Rome three years ago, and a long process of working groups which included people from active and recent war zones, peace activists, academics, theologians, pastors, bishops and others. This month's conference brought together about 75 people from all over the world. I posted the press release on the Seven Core Values of Catholic Social Teaching thread on LT. It was inspiring and fruitful.

At the end we had a closing mass in the Church of Saint Paschal Baylon, a short walk from the dicastery. The presider was Cardinal Joe Tobin from the USA, who had been part of the conference. Usually when a presider starts to sing some of his parts of the mass I groan inwardly, as very few of them can carry it off, but he has a very good voice and it really worked. He is also very good at using inclusive language. The mass was basically in English but there were bits in Italian, French and Spanish, as this was a multinational multilingual gathering. We sang the Missa de Angelis, which brought back childhood memories - in my old parish before the days of Vatican II that was the only sung mass which we knew, and we weren't even aware that there were other settings.

Tobin preached a good little homily, and in it he told an anecdote about how he once heard Archbishop Desmond Tutu preach. Tutu told the old anecdote about how "when the white man came we had the land and they had the bible; they told us to close our eyes and pray, and when we opened our eyes they had the land and we had the bible". Tobin said he had expected Tutu to develop this into a critique of colonialism and apartheid, but instead he continued, "This was their greatest mistake. They had handed us the means of our liberation!"

The only disappointments for many of the participants (which were probably inevitable given that it was organised by Vatican officials) were that we were only given communion under one kind, and more noticeable to the large number of women and other laity present, that a mob of archbishops, bishops and priests were vested and occupying the sanctuary and the front few pews of the church. For a small community mass with a group of people who have been working together as equals in a fairly intense conference, many of the participants are used to a mass where only the presider and maybe one other priest vest and hang around the sanctuary, while the remainder simply take their place in the congregation as people of God, regardless of their rank or ordinational status.

50John5918
Editado: Abr 22, 2019, 12:29 am

At home over Easter (though my wife is in South Sudan) so I went to our "local" parish. The mass is supposed to start at 8 am but it actually started at 7.30 - maybe they announced it last Sunday but I wasn't here. But fortunately I was very early, as the road was dry and in relatively good condition and I covered the 35 km in just one hour, so I got in just as the entrance hymn was finishing, and was ensconced in a pew by the time the priest said the opening greetings. Sad sign of the times that there was a policewoman armed with an automatic rifle standing guard outside the church. A couple of Cuban doctors were kidnapped by Al Shabab in the north east of Kenya last week, so there are heightened security concerns.

The church was full but not packed. Mass was in English, with most of the singing in Kiswahili apart from one song in another local language which I didn't recognise, and a couple of hymns in English. The singing of the responsorial psalm by a cantor was awful. There was plenty of movement - in African culture it is virtually impossible to stand still when there is any music. Children were taken out for catechism at the beginning of the Liturgy of the Word. Here they don't pass a plate or basket around for the money collection - boxes are placed in two or three convenient locations and you walk up and put your money in the box while hymns are sung. The procession of the gifts, as usual, was a lively affair, with people offering all that the priests will need for the week, including fruit and vegetables, maize flour, cooking oil and even toilet paper.

The homily started well, reflecting on injustice and prejudice and how that was broken by the symbolism of Mary being the first to notice the resurrection. It then started rambling. I got the bit about how none of us should think ourselves better than others, as we are all sinners, albeit forgiven sinners, but I lost most of the rest. Fortunately it wasn't too long. The ministers of the eucharist who assisted the priest were reigious sisters and brothers. As usual, we only received communion under one kind - the cup was not offered to the congregation.

The whole thing was finished in one hour and forty minutes, and then I went next door to a hotel which offers a full cooked breakfast, as my Easter treat.

Edited to add: And later that night, an Easter blessing - it rained! We got about 18 mm at home, much-needed rain after a long drought. I had to go out in my Land Rover at 9 pm to rescue my stepson, who got stuck driving through one of the dry riverbeds on our little road. Fortunately it wasn't too far away and I was able to tow him home.

51John5918
Editado: mayo 6, 2019, 10:17 am

Yesterday I was at the requiem mass in UK of a young niece who died of cancer. It may sound like a cliche, but it was a beautiful mass. She had prepared her own funeral during her long illness, and it was beautifully done. Readings were from Ecclesiastes (there is a time for everything) and Matthew 25 (what you did to the least of my brothers and sisters, you did to me). Singing was excellent, as my brother is part of the church folk group and they all turned up to support the family. The priest, who by chance is an old missionary colleague of mine, was excellent, and his words and demeanour throughout the mass were very sensitive and meaningful. Communion was offered under both species, and bearing in mind that many non-Catholics were present, he made a short but welcoming introduction and left it up to each individual to decide whether their belief allows them to participate.

The mob were not invited to the crematorium, only my brother and his wife and their other daughter. I hear that that's becoming more common, as everything that needs to be said has been said at the requiem mass and the crematorium is a bit of an anti-climax. It's different, I think, if the body is being planted in the ground. So the rest of us got first dibs at the bunfight in the parish hall.

One of my cousin's sons is training to be an Anglican lay minister whose work will include officiating at funerals. I had a chat with him afterwards and he was most impressed with what he had seen and learned from the Catholic priest who did this one.

Edted to add: The priest also proclaimed the words of institution during the Eucharistic Prayer with feeling, in a way that made them meaningful and accessible as a narrative rather than a formulaic text. It reminded me that they are anamnesis, a memorialisation which at the same time makes manifest what we are remembering. As part of that he translated calix as "cup" rather than "chalice".

52John5918
Editado: mayo 10, 2019, 3:14 am

And then on Sunday a complete change. I was staying with a couple of old friends and she is an Anglican parish priest, so I went to mass with them in their north London church. It's High Anglican - lots of smells, bells and vestments. They had a deacon and sub-deacon, both lay readers simply fulfilling the liturgical role. Music was extremely good, as one would expect in an Anglican church, with some good old favourites like Rejoice, the Lord is King, and Glorious things of thee are spoken to the tune of Deutschand Uber Alles, which the congregation could join in with, but there was also a lot of performance music.

For some reason they used the King James Version for the first reading, from Acts 9:1-6, and I came across the phrase "kick against the pricks" for the first time ever - I'm not familiar with the KJV and most translations which I have seen use the word "goad" rather than "pricks". It sounds strange in a modern British English setting. But she gave a good little homily, much shorter than the average as they had a baptism during the mass, which was done very well.

Then an overnight flight back to Nairobi where I arrived at an ungodly hour of the morning, so when I made my way to the missionary guest house where I had left my car I was in time for morning mass. Just six of us present, a quiet and reflective mass, although since there were a couple of nuns there we had an obligatory couple of hymns.

53John5918
Editado: Jul 23, 2019, 8:15 am

I'm currently in New York accompanying a retired Sudanese bishop on a trip for fund-raising and lobbying. We had nothing on our schedule today so we went to mass at the nearest parish, Holy Family. The bishop was wearing his clericals, but he didn't concelebrate, and we just sat in the pews with the punters. It bills itself as the parish for the nearby United Nations HQ, so we might have expected something a little different from the average US parish, but...

The first shock was that the priest said the mass with his back to the congregation, even though there is a free-standing altar in this fairly modern church. It must be nigh on fifty years since I've seen a priest do this. Why, for heavens sake?

The homily was short, business-like and well-delivered, but I agree with my bishop who described it as cold, not appearing to come from the heart of the priest. It was in very churchy language and reduced today's wonderful story of Martha and Mary to a prescriptive series of dos and don'ts.

The priest gave communion alone, with no Eucharistic ministers, under one kind only, with only the host offered to us. While that is still common in some parts of the world, I'm led to believe by Tim that it is very uncommon in the USA, where communion under both kinds is apparently the norm.

One point where the priest did turn to face us was when a baby started crying. He turned to shake his head and wag his finger at the parents.

There was a visiting choir from the Principality of Andorra. They were very good, but it enhanced the sense that this mass was a performance rather than a participative experience. I think I have commented before that this is a feeling I get in many US parishes. Mass is a slick and well-rehearsed performance, but somehow lacks soul. Today's offering did nothing to change that perception.

Finally, we were both astonished to see machines installed at the back of the church so you can make your weekly donation by credit or debit card. I suppose that reflects the increasingly cashless society in which we now live.

Edited to add: We have since been informed by a colleague at the UN that for many years it was a lively, thriving international parish. The popular parish priest was then removed by Cardinal Dolan and replaced with the current conservative one. The congregation halved in size and the mass became what we experienced on Sunday. Apparently it only livens up when the Papal Nuncio comes, which he does from time to time. This Philippino archbishop, I'm informed, insists on facing the people when he presides at the Eucharist, as is the practice throughout the universal Church except, apparently, in New York.

54John5918
Ago 29, 2019, 3:21 am

The feast of the beheading of John the Baptist. I'm facilitating the General Assembly of the South Sudan Council of Churches in a Catholic pastoral centre. Also in the centre this week is a group of Catholic nuns, both South Sudanese and missionaries from Asia and other parts of Africa, doing a course on computers.

We have with us Catholic and Anglican bishops from our neighbours Kenya and Uganda, as well as church leaders from eight churches in South Sudan (Catholic, Anglican, two Presbyterian denominations, Pentecostals, African Inland Church, Sudan Interior Church and Coptic Church), representatives of regional bodies such as the All Africa Conference of Churches and the Catholic AMECEA, and the Secretary General of our neighbouring council in Sudan. Ugandan Catholic Archbishop John Baptist Odama, who accompanied our own church and political leaders to the Vatican to meet the pope, where the pope kissed the feet of our warring leaders, who told us that when Francis saw the South Sudanese church leaders coming as a united delegation, he said, "Theologians are wasting their time discussing ecumenism; you are living it!"

The same archbishop presided at mass this morning in the small chapel belonging to the pastoral centre. There were about thirty of us there, with two South Sudanese priests concelebrating and a couple more just sitting with us punters in the pews, with nuns and laity. It's a nice circular chapel, with a tabernacle modelled on an African thatched house.

The archbishop preached on the theme of speaking truth to those in power, as his namesake John the Baptist did, a theme which is very relevant to both Uganda and South Sudan (and, in the current international climate, perhaps also in the USA and UK). He himself, as well as being a leading figure in ecumenism and peacebuilding, is renowned for standing up to both President Museveni and Lord's Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony, at great risk to his own life.

It's a custom in a number of the smaller chapels belonging to religious communities in South Sudan that at communion the ciborium and chalice are moved to the front of the altar and people come one by one and serve themselves with the host and the wine, and that was the case this morning.

Before mass we had Morning Prayer from the Divine Office, and during the prayer and the mass the sisters led us in singing hymns. As we were multinational and multilingual, it was all conducted in English.

552wonderY
Oct 16, 2019, 10:11 am

Visiting my daughter and grandchildren this past week, the 15 year old asked if I was attending church Sunday. (They are unchurched.) She wanted to attend with me, on the condition that we would walk there and back. I was touched. She doesn't seek out conversation on God in other contexts, but those brief explanations of prayer, ritual and the readings seem to have some value for her.

Somehow (probably from my daughter), she has considered faith and science to be opposites. I hope to dispel that false view, and perhaps made some headway.

56John5918
Oct 19, 2019, 9:12 am

Mass this morning in Juba, South Sudan, for the opening and blessing of a new house for the Daughters of St Paul. Their ministry is communications, and their main job is to run a Catholic bookshop, but they also visit the poor displaced people trapped in the UN Protection of civilians camps, and their bookshop is often more like a counselling centre than a shop. Four of them have lived for the last eleven years in a small, old, shabby, cramped prefab, which incidentally provides ver little protection from stray bullets, so everybody is happy that they hace finally got a good solid house of their own. Unlike many of the modern houses, which are just concrete boxes with air conditioners, their engineer learned the lessons of the old missionary and colonial houses and built a high roof to keep the house cool.

Mass was outside under a series of small marquees to shade the participants from the hot sun. The archbishop presided, with about half a dozen priests concelebrating. The congregation was less than a hundred. The holy water was in a large pink plastic bucket, and it was sprinkled using a freshly-picked leafy branch. The elderly archbishop blessed the area near the altar, then sat down and left it to his secretary, a strapping young priest, to take the bucket and bless the rest of the house and compound. Mass was in English, with songs in English, Arabic and Kiswahili. The whole mass, with homily and speeches, was no more than two hours.

After communion the Daughters of St Paul, four resident sisters plus their provincial superior who had come for the occasion, all Kenyans, did a thanksgiving dance to the music of a Kiswahili hymn. Gradually others, including the archbishop, joined in, which is not uncommon in Africa.

Mass was followed by lunch. All in all a beautiful occasion.

57John5918
Oct 20, 2019, 2:03 am

A completely different mass experience this morning in a different religious community, just four of us sitting around a small table in the living room, an Irish priest, a Canadian sister, a US lay missionary and me. Quiet and reflective, a sharing on the readings in place of the homily, communion under both kinds, a beautiful little candle holder from South America, priest wearing a stole but not an alb... very nice mass.

58John5918
Oct 20, 2019, 2:25 am

>55 2wonderY:

My thoughts and prayers are with you in your spiritual accompaniment of your grand-daughter. As a former teacher of both science and religion with a degree in physics as well as my theological and biblical studies, it continues to surprise me how entrenched is the narrative that there is somehow a contradiction between science and faith. While it's true that this is the position of some of the bible literalist and creationist evangelical groups in the USA, it is certainly not true of mainstream global churches such as Catholics, Anglicans and Lutherans.

59John5918
Nov 7, 2019, 1:18 am

An interesting piece from the NCR entitled The Latin Mass becomes a cult of toxic tradition. I grew up with the Tridentine Rite (great fun for young altar servers!) and have nothing against the odd Latin Mass from time to time, as an expression of the diversity of liturgucal rites within our universal Catholic Church, but I think this article well describes how the Latin Mass has become a rallying point for a certain type of angry Catholic. It is a tragedy and a source of shame that the Eucharist has become so divisive.

In a previous era, the Latin Mass was merely a uniform and standard way of celebrating the liturgy in the United States. In the wake of much needed reforms instituted by the Second Vatican Council, the Latin Mass has become a rallying point for change-resistant sects within the church. The ultra-conservatism practiced by these Latin Mass groups is radical and narrow-minded. They utilize the Latin Mass structure to wield control over believers — particularly women, who are reduced to a state of discriminatory subjugation in Latin rites. The stubbornly resistant, anti-modern practices of these Latin Mass adherents border on cultism.

The Latin Mass fosters clericalist structures in the church. The liturgy — spoken in an ancient language no longer in modern vernacular usage — places all power in the hands of the priest. The priest keeps his back turned to the people for most of the ceremony. Aside from making occasional responses, the congregation plays no active part in worship. All people inside the church are expected to kneel on cue at various points. The priest is at the center of the spectacle. He is separated from the people he is supposed to serve by an altar rail — a barrier that gives him privileges. To receive the Eucharist, people must kneel at his feet...

Meanwhile, the Latin tradition oppresses women. Women are expected — indeed, in some cases commanded — to wear skirts instead of trousers, cover themselves with long clothing and wear veils over their heads. No such rules exist for the men. It is discrimination, and therefore the Latin Mass actively endorses sexism. Instead of a unifying form of worship, the Latin Mass has become an instrument of oppression and a gathering point for Catholic fundamentalists.

In most cases, it is useless to politely disagree with people in the Latin Mass sect. Their attitude creates blindness — not only to true faith, but to their own behavior. They treat others with pride and animosity...


60John5918
Editado: Ene 5, 2020, 9:04 am

The Feast of the Epiphany. Mass today in the little chapel in our village. We've been living here for two years now, and this is the first time we have seen a priest here, although I believe he has come occasionally when we were absent. We were expecting him for mass on Christmas Eve but he had a problem with his car or the road (due to heavy rains) or both so he couldn't make it. But today the road has largely dried out, although it is still dodgy in places where it was washed away, and he made it, only one hour late, after first saying mass at another outstation chapel. He is a Franciscan from a community about 30 km away. My house is about a mile from the chapel, a pleasant stroll along a rough track.

The chapel is made of corrugated iron on a wooden frame, with a concrete floor. It's nearly 30 years old, and I'm informed that it's the oldest building in the village - there was nothing here when it was first built by missionaries, to serve surrounding scattered homesteads. Painted a dingy shade of green, it looks pretty dilapidated, but it's still solid enough.

The mass was in Kiswahili, with the occasional word or two in English for my benefit, although I could follow most of the mass in my English prayerbook, and even the homily, since I knew the topic and could recognise a lot of the words as much of the Kiswahili vocabulary is derived from Arabic, a language which I know. Songs and readings were all in Kiswahili. The congregation was about half a dozen adults and ten children. Even with such a small number, there was still a short liturgical dance at the beginning of mass. Only three of us plus the priest received communion. The mass lasted about an hour and a quarter. Afterwards we were all invited to say a word or two, so I was able to introduce myself.

There is a lay catechist who serves this chapel but he doesn't come often, and there is a plan to get him to stay here more of the time in a small one-room corrugated house of the same vintage as the chapel itself, so that he can do regular catechesis and prayer services in the Maasai language. Many rural Maasai can't really follow Kiswahili. I think there are only three Maasai priests in the diocese, and most of the other Kenyan priests don't speak Maasai. Many of the old foreign missionaries in the diocese were my friends and colleagues, and all of them spoke fluent Maasai. Their programme was not simply to visit the outstation chapels of a Sunday for mass, but they would spend three weeks of each month on the road, staying in Maasai homesteads, sleeping on goatskins on the ground in houses made of mud and cow dung, eating with the local people, learning the language and culture, and really incarnating themselves and the faith into the Maasai communities. Now the missionaries have moved on and it is all in the hands of the Kenyan bishops.

The rural outstation model is very familiar to me from my own missionary work in Sudan and South Sudan, and in some ways I felt very much at home in this small chapel this morning, even though I don't speak the language (in fact that was often my experience in South Sudan also, as although I speak Arabic and one of the South Sudanese local languages, there are 64 languages in that country so I would often find myself in a location where I didn't know the particular language used there). It also led me to reflect once again on the Amazon Synod, and the difficulties faced in rural areas in South America, Africa and parts of Asia, difficulties which many Catholics in Europe and north America apparently can't even begin to comprehend. For us it is a daily reality.

Next mass here in our village will be in three weeks time, although I might be in South Sudan so I'll probably miss that one.

61John5918
Ene 22, 2020, 1:37 am

Daily mass two days in a row, an unusual opportunity for me. I'm facilitating an international ecumenical meeting in South Sudan which is being held in a Catholic pastoral centre, where there is daily mass for the resident community and staff. Fifteen to twenty people present each day in this little circular chapel which I think I have reported on before. Nice little tabernacle in the shape of a small African wood and grass house. The presiding priests were South Sudanese and Ugandan, from two different religious orders. Communion was under both kinds, and we were invited to serve ourselves from the altar. Participants included people from South Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Nigeria, Canada, Australia and UK, including the South Sudanese Anglican Archbishop Primate, along with a bishop from the Archbishop of Canterbury's office, and the Moderator of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches, a Kenyan Anglican who is the first woman and the first African to hold that post. She has been accompanying the Sudanese and South Sudanese churches for decades.

62John5918
Ene 28, 2020, 7:28 am

I'm posting this at random and it does not refer to a particular date or place, as I don't want to give ammunition to right wing Catholic vigilantes who look out for things they can report to the authorities. On a number of occasions I have had the opportunity to participate in the Eucharist in small groups, usually in someone's house, where the presider is a former priest, resigned from the priesthood but not laicised, and thus canonically his mass is valid but not licit. Readings, including the gospel, are shared between all those present, as are some of the prayers of the mass, including some parts of the Eucharistic prayer. The reflection after the readings is also shared. The bread is real bread, not a papery white wafer, and the wine is normal wine, not the sickly sweet stuff which goes under the monicker "altar wine". The mass is usually short, and reflective. I know many Catholics who participate in this sort of informal and unofficial Eucharist, sometimes with a priest or ex-priest, sometimes not. In these gatherings women may take the role of presider.

Lex orandi, lex credendi (as they pray, so they believe) is an old Catholic principle, and I think all over the world there are small (and not so small) groups of Catholics who are demonstrating, under the radar and without much visibility, that their prayer and practice, and thus their belief, is more expansive and inclusive than the current state of official doctrine and theology. I pray that this manifestation of the Church will continue to grow in size and influence within the larger Church.

63John5918
Feb 26, 2020, 9:58 am

We went to the little chapel in our village on Sunday morning, as we were scheduled to have mass, but in fact the priest didn't pitch and we had a catechist leading a service of the Word instead. There were maybe a dozen people there. The service was in Kiswahili and English (the latter for my benefit), with the occasional translation into Maasai for the elderly lady who couldn't follow either Kiswahili or English. This catechist is relatively young, which surprised me a bit as in Sudan I'm used to elderly catechists (true viri probati!), and doesn't speak any Maasai, which isn't great for the indigenous community. It lasted a couple of hours - rather long for my taste for a service of the Word.

Amongst the (long) notices read out at the end, we were informed that there would be a prayer service with ashes on Ash Wednesday at 10 am, led by the catechist. Then yesterday I got a phone call from the chair of the church council informing me that in fact we would be having mass at 4 pm. Then today at 3.30 pm I got another phone call from the same chap informing me that in fact we would be starting mass early, so I jumped in my trusty Land Rover and drove the one mile to the chapel, which takes me 15 minutes - it really is a very rough track - and we started mass about quarter to four.

There were a couple of dozen pupils from the local school, and a dozen or so adults, including some teachers and two caretakers from the tourist cottages not too far away. The priest was a Franciscan whom I hadn't met before - it seems that several of the confreres from that community are helping out with the parish. He preached a long homily, but still mass was all over in an hour and a quarter. Perhaps he had an eye on the weather, as he came in a normal car, not 4WD, and he would have been marooned if the rain which was threatening had actually started. The whole mass was in Kiswahili. Ashes were distributed, and I was pleased that he gave communion under both species. I know that theologically it is sound to receive communion under one kind only, usually the Body of Christ, but it always feels to me that something is missing if I don't get the Blood of Christ too. "Do this in memory of me" - and then we only do half of it!

64John5918
Mar 1, 2020, 8:49 am

Well, it's been a busy week in our little chapel. A liturgy of the Word last Sunday, mass on Ash Wednesday, and today a communion service. I think that now our chapel is in the hands of the Franciscans, things will happen. They are even talking of building a centre here - their ministry is to serve the poor, and they feel they need to be closer to the rural poor than they are in their parish 30-odd km away. Previously our chapel was covered by a parish run by diocesan priests, and I have to say I find that in many parts of the world the religious orders are better at outreach and evangelisation than the diocesan priests. I see too many of what I call "office priests", who see their role as sitting in the parish office waiting for people to come to them rather than going out to find them. Sadly this seems to be prevalent amongst many of the younger generations of priests. I think this might be what Pope Francis was getting at when he said that the pastors should smell like the sheep!

Anyway, today's service was led by a Franciscan brother, who brought the consecrated hosts with him. He pitched up riding pillion on the back of a motorbike (something you probably wouldn't see a diocesan priest doing) an hour late (which you might!), as he had been to another chapel on the way and they had delayed him. There are discussions going on in the parish at the moment as to whether they should reverse the order, and let the priest, brother or catechist come to us first and then go to the other chapel on his way home. There were a dozen or so of us for the service, which lasted around an hour. There was a little liturgical dance for the entrance procession. I think four of us received communion, which was about 2/3 of the adults present, quite a high percentage for here. The service was all in Kiswahili apart from some of the announcements at the end which were repeated in Maasai for the elderly lady. I followed in my missal, and occasionally my wife would lean over and whisper a translation of something into my ear.

65John5918
Mar 8, 2020, 5:08 am

Walked to mass this morning, but the priest didn't pitch as his car broke down, so we walked home again. It's a nice walk, a mile there and a mile back, up and down hills - good exercise. My wife and I were on the Camino to Santiago de Compostella last October, and we have really come to appreciate meditative walking.

66margd
Editado: Mar 24, 2020, 4:53 pm

This Italian Mass was NOT boring! (No translation needed.)
I bet priest had sympathy of congregants trying to work at home, though!

In Italy today, a priest decided to live-stream a mass due to COVID-19.
Unfortunately he activated the video filters by mistake.
0:18 ( https://twitter.com/KiwiEV/status/1242267839236583427 )
- Gavin Shoebridge @KiwiEV | 9:51 PM · Mar 23, 2020

672wonderY
Abr 12, 2020, 9:53 am

What struck me most about Pope Francis' homily today was his observation that armies and soldiers are putting down their arms and working to save lives and ameliorate suffering.

What a concept!

68vpfluke
Abr 12, 2020, 11:49 am

I've read that Saudi Arabia has kind of suspended the war with Yemen because of the Corunnavirus impact. About 4 days ago, I was looking at a map of the worldwide spread of this virus, and it seemed to show that Yemen had not been infected. However information coming out of Yemen is limited.

69vpfluke
Abr 12, 2020, 11:58 am

My Episcopalian parish in Durham, NC, had a morning prayer service this morning via Zoom. I read the Epistle lesson from Acts. The curate officiated including the Pascha Nostrum and later a sermon. Another person read the Te Deum Laudamus, the gospel was read by the deacon who also did the prayers of the people.

On Good Friday, I sung the page lingua, which was the only music during the triduum and Easter. The only Easter hymn I can sing a cappella is the Strife is o'er the battle done: not a good choice for this particular Easter.

70SaintSunniva
Abr 12, 2020, 12:16 pm

We will be "attending" a live Easter Morning Mass aired at noon Central, by Fr. Rocco in Wisconsin on relevantradio.com. Until the shutdown is over, he will do Mass at this time everyday.

71SaintSunniva
Abr 12, 2020, 12:18 pm

Last night, Easter Vigil, we attended a live stream from a priest at St. Thomas Aquinas in Boulder. I'm thinking it was held in his private chapel. He faced the altar, with a fellow priest assisting. Lovely to hear ALL the readings.

722wonderY
Abr 13, 2020, 10:15 am

>67 2wonderY:

I did note an apparent lack of any females within the confines of the Pope's celebration. I hope I'm wrong.

73margd
Abr 13, 2020, 1:08 pm

What of Our Souls as We Face Coronavirus?
Kathryn Jean Lopez | April 13, 202

...It drives me a little crazy that we say Masses are canceled. Because, actually, in a way, we’re more united in the Mass than ever. Priests are still celebrating Masses, just not in the way we are accustomed to — where we are physically present! And this spiritual-communion business is real. That may be hard to believe in a culture that thinks prayer is inactivity, but Christian communion as the Body of Christ in the world possibly has never been stronger. Not if we are entering into prayer with love and commitment...

...Now, what we’re finding among Catholics who truly believe in the Real Presence is that it is some kind of agony not to be receiving the Eucharist. If you believe that Jesus is truly present, that would be a big ask. But from day one of this inability to receive the Eucharist, I’ve become more and more keenly aware of my own unworthiness.

...My life is made possible by people who haven’t ceased putting themselves in harm’s way. If there is only one thing that we learn from this quarantine time, may it be that everything good is a gift, and we are so much closer to one another and to the Creator of us all than we realize when we are sucked up in the business of everyday life. Coronavirus changing us has to be a choice. And it’s a choice between the soul’s life and death.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/easter-holy-week-what-of-our-souls-as-we-...

74John5918
Jul 27, 2020, 7:31 am

We were at a Catholic parish in Nairobi yesterday afternoon, not for mass but for a baptism. An old friend of mine, a retired Sudanese Catholic bishop, baptised a nephew for us. There were only about ten of us there, all coronovirus protocols observed.

But I was chatting to the parish priest, a Mexican missionary, and he was telling me that they normally used to have five masses in the parish church of a Sunday, plus two in outstation chapels. Now they have ten at the parish - five in the church and five in a big marquee set up in the car park - so that they can observe the government's coronavirus rules of not more than 100 people at any one service, and enforced social distancing - all the pews were marked out with masking tape to show people how to sit the requisite distance apart.

Incidentally another government rule is that people aged over 58 should not attend public church services, so that lets me and the missus off the hook!

75margd
Editado: Jul 27, 2020, 8:43 am

Not Mass, but a Methodist church near us has Sunday service on a sloping lawn near river with parishioners on lawn chairs scattered appropriately. Reminds me of Sermon on the Mount--a nice sight this strange COVID summer! :)

76John5918
Oct 4, 2020, 6:41 am

We have a retired South Sudanese bishop and a young South Sudanese missionary priest staying with us this weekend, so we had mass in our living room with the bishop presiding. Quiet and low key, just the two of them with my wife and me.

The Kenyan government has now relaxed COVID restrictions to allow over-60s to attend church services (still with masks, handwashing, social distancing and a cap on the number of people allowed), so we'll have to start going to mass regularly again. We don't get a priest every Sunday at the Catholic chapel in our village, a small corrugated iron structures, but two or three times a month in a good month.

77margd
Editado: Oct 16, 2020, 12:24 pm

By the flowers and vestments, looks like Easter celebration--priest dancing to "Oh Happy Day!":
https://www.facebook.com/carolyn.anderson.seccesp/videos/10222324854928535 (3:11)

782wonderY
Oct 16, 2020, 8:38 pm

>77 margd: Shoot! I can’t get the video to run.

79margd
Oct 17, 2020, 10:29 am

>78 2wonderY: Here it is on youtube:

Sacred Heart Parish Omaha's Choir "Oh Happy Day" (3:10)
•Apr 20, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1gNM_up-Ew

I thought it might have been broadcast during shutdown--nobody in the pews.
People had to have been cheered seeing their dancing priest on screen. :)

802wonderY
Oct 17, 2020, 12:14 pm

That’s pretty good. Some cringing moments, but altogether not bad.

81John5918
Nov 6, 2020, 2:25 pm

Yesterday we buried one of our neighbours who died last week of various health problems but not of COVID, a 39-year old woman who leaves a husband and a teenage daughter. The first challenge was to find her baptism card, proof of baptism which is required by the Kenyan Catholic Church. Because the deceased had led a bit of a nomadic life and the parish where she was best known was far away, we had difficulty finding a diocesan priest who would cut through the bureaucracy, so I went and found one of my missionary friends, a South Sudanese priest belonging to an East African missionary congregation. He had actually met the deceased once at a barbecue at our house a while back. He presided at the funeral mass in Nairobi, where there was limited attendance due to coronavirus social distancing restrictions. I did not attend that mass.

My missionary friend was unable to come to the rural family home, a couple of hours drive from Nairobi, as he had another funeral to attend, so we approached our local sub-parish here. Luckily we found the baptism card eventually, and contacted the lay catechist, who agreed to preside at the burial in the family home. There are only two priests in the main parish, which is twenty miles from our chapel, and one of them is on leave at the moment, so we couldn't get a priest, but it's a normal practice for lay catechists to lead services in the absence of a priest.

The burial service was in the open air under an open-sided marquee, and there were more than 150 people there, from the local community as well as the deceased's friends and relatives from Nairobi and further afield. Masks were worn, hand-washing facilities were prominent, and while there was no specific social distancing, we were in the open air with a brisk breeze blowing. The service was in Kiswahili and was similar to a prayer service in lieu of Sunday mass. The Liturgy of the Word was as per a mass, then there were various prayers to replace the Eucharistic Prayer, followed by the Lord's Prayer. The homily was translated into English, although it was a pretty appalling homily. After all that we followed the coffin to the freshly-dug grave, near the main house overlooking their dam, a beautiful spot. It's very common here to bury folk in their own homesteads.

RIP.

82John5918
Editado: Abr 9, 2021, 2:44 pm

Another funeral, and the first public mass I have attended for many moons. The emeritus archbishop of Juba, South Sudan, with whom I worked very closely for more than twenty years, died in a Nairobi hospital this week aged 80, after a stroke, and today we had a requiem mass in Nairobi before the body is flown to Juba for burial tomorrow. I was sorry I was not able to see him before he died, but he was in a coma so I gave the hospital a miss. He resigned officially some years ago when he was 75, as is the norm, but Rome asked him to stay on until they found a successor, so he only got to retire properly just over a year ago. He has been an outspoken defender of human rights and advocate of peace and reconciliation, and it's in those contexts that I mainly worked with him.

The mass was in the Shrine of the Apostles of Jesus, an African missionary society. The presider was a retired Sudanese bishop, a year or two older than the deceased. Both of them are Comboni missionaries. The apostolic nuncio to South Sudan and Kenya was there, and about twenty priests concelebrated. There was a good turn out, all of us duly masked, sanitised and socially distanced. Mass was in English. The Agnus Dei was in Sudanese Arabic, but they sung it to a tune which is not the well known one, and indeed even the choir didn't seen to know which tune they were supposed to be singing, so that was a bit chaotic. But the rest of the singing, in English, was OK. Women read the the first and second readings and the bidding prayers, and a woman cantor led the responsorial psalm, which was nice in what is often a patriarchal church. There was no sign of peace due to COVID, but as is customary in South Sudan, the bishop invited us all to join in the prayer for peace after the Our Father. We were invited to sanitise our hands before receiving Holy Communion.

The bishop's homily was competent enough, and not too long. The nuncio's speech at the end of the mass was really good, and I'm about to send him an e-mail complimenting him on it. Not only did he recall the late archbishop's work for peace, but he also noted a generational shift in the bishops' conference in Sudan and South Sudan. The generation of bishops who went through the long civil war (the generation that I worked closely with, often in the bush together in the war zone, under fire) is now passing. It's good that we have a generation of new younger bishops, but it's sad that the wisdom, humility and experience of leadership of the older bishops is almost lost to us, with only three of those bishops still alive, all aged between about 80 and 85. The South Sudanese Ambassador to Kenya was present and in his short speech he also noted the contribution that the late archbishop made to peace.

The whole thing - reception of the body, mass, speeches, and finally the blessing and viewing of the body - took about two and a half hours. One thing that surprised me slightly was that the priests all wore purple vestments. I had rather got used to white being used as the liturgical colour for funerals, but I realise that it is only optional. One concelebrant was wearing white - good on him!

Archbishop Emeritus Paulino Lukudu Loro, RIP.

83John5918
Editado: Jun 20, 2021, 4:40 am

I'm currently in South Sudan after receiving my two vaccinations, and I've been to mass more in the last week than probably the whole of the last year.

Last week I was in a pastoral centre outside Juba facilitating an assembly for a multinational and multi-congregational group of Catholic missionaries from more than a dozen countries on five continents. There were a couple of priests and the rest were religious sisters and brothers, about 18 people in all. We had daily mass in the beautiful little chapel which I think I have described before above. We were masked and socially distanced. The custom in South Sudan in these pandemical days is to invite people to wave to each other at the Sign of Peace, avoiding physical contact. For communion the ciborium and chalice were placed at the front of the altar and each person served themself, but these days nobody drinks from the chalice, only dipping the host. Each day the liturgy was prepared by a different team, and on one occasion I was invited to preach a homily, which I enjoyed doing.

Today I'm back in Juba town and I went to an English mass at the chapel of a missionary house which I think I have also often mentioned before. It's very popular with expatriates, and the car park was full of big white vehicles belonging to the UN and international NGOs. There were probably 80 or 90 people present, including quite a few nuns from different congregations. This mass used to be held in the chapel with overflow seating outside, but with the pandemic the mass is now completely outdoors, with a portable altar, socially distanced seating, masks, and even the microphone was sanitised when it was passed from one lector to another. It's a bit challenging in the rainy season. It rained heavily early this morning, then stopped, then there was a worrying sprinkle just as mass was about to begin, but it held off for the duration of the mass. Given the theme of today's Gospel reading, it's tempting to think that someone asked Jesus to calm the storm for us! It started raining again soon after mass finished. Today's presider was a Ugandan priest who teaches at the seminary. He's a good speaker, but I wasn't too impressed with the homily. The mass took almost exactly one hour.

Another nice little bonus of this trip is that I've been able to pray a few parts of the Divine Office in community, a rare treat.

84John5918
Jul 25, 2021, 5:00 am

Today, 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time, we have staying with us while recuperating from some surgery an elderly missionary priest who lives and works in the cramped conditions of a camp for displaced persons under the administration and protection of the UN in South Sudan.

We celebrated the Eucharist with him this morning around the coffee table in our living room. A small informal mass, just the three of us, no vestments or other fancy paraphernalia, just a candle, a chalice and paten, some wine and homemade bread, and a Sunday missal. We shared the readings between the three of us, my wife reading the gospel. We all joined in much of the text of the mass, in line with the theology of the liturgy which many of us learned back in the '70s and '80s that it is not the priest who "celebrates" the mass; we all celebrate the mass together and the role of the priest is that of presider, to lead and guide the community in the liturgy. In a very real sense we are all concelebrants, by virtue of our baptism, not only those who are ordained.

We had a sharing for the homily, where we reflected on the miracle of Jesus' feeding of the five thousand - the miracle was not some supernatural appearance of extra grub, but the fact that he encouraged those present to share what little they had, and it turned out to be more than enough. We were reminded of the quote attributed to Gandhi, "Earth provides enough to satisfy every person's needs, but not every person's greed.”

85margd
Jul 25, 2021, 7:24 am

A Memorial Mass that had to have record for number of Mormons in attendance. (Actually an early offshoot of Mormonism.) The woman memorialized was a devout Catholic and nurse, widowed in early life, very busy and generous with her time and talent, who had married a (~Mormon) priest (later an elder), tending to his family and congregation as she continued to do so in her own church. Anyway, it was a remarkably large and diverse gathering for an older person, and an indication of the wide respect she had earned in two very diverse communities.

86brone
Jul 31, 2021, 7:23 pm

>25 John5918: Hi I'm new here, what is a punter

87brone
Jul 31, 2021, 9:18 pm

>84 John5918: Mass around the coffee table, homemade bread, sharing the homily, wife reads the gospel, and we all reflect on Gandi. Was this a latin rite mass? Was the bread pure wheat, unleavened and cooked properly according to the appropriate cannons. Let me guess cum bia was the offeratory hymn. Let us then distinguish "table from table", sacred from profane, heavenly bread from common bread. WE do this by firmly believing this Sacrament is the true body & blood of the Lord, Whom the angels adore in heaven, our preparation must include a period of fasting,at least one hour before. We the faithful should prepare ourselves to receive this Sacrament as deduced from the actions of Christ, who, before he gave the Sacrament to his apostles, although they were already clean, He washed their feet "to show extreme diligence" needful in approaching "with the greatest purity and innocence of soul", This is what we learned back in the '50s and early '60s. I am reminded that the Ark of the Lord worked great blessings for the Israelites {manner}which when taken by the Phillistines, brought them destructive plague and disgrace. And so the warning of St Paul "he who eats & drinks unworthily, eats & drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the body of the Lord. So the unvested "presider" does not use fancy paraphernalia (I presume this means no chalice ah what the heck i'm through with my coffee cup we can use that for the precious blood, whats that dear you found and old candle in the ultility draw that will work. Let us end this triple concelebration with a resounding verse from Michael rode the boat ashore.

88John5918
Editado: Ago 1, 2021, 3:24 am

>86 brone:

Welcome to the LT Catholic Tradition group. In British slang, a punter is just a member of the public. A "punter in the pews" would be an informal way of referring to the congregation at mass. "Bums on seats" is another one I've frequently heard.

>87 brone:

Your theological training in the fifties and sixties was obviously different to mine ten to twenty years later, and to that of the missionary priest to whom I refer, who is ten years older than me. Missionaries who have experienced the Eucharist in very difficult circumstances perhaps have a more immediate sense of what is at the core of the Eucharist and what are "paraphernalia" than people who have not had that experience. To answer some of your questions it was a Latin Rite mass, the chalice and paten were well-worn forty year old sacred vessels, and the songs we sang included Holy, Holy Holy, Lord God Almighty (written in 1861) and a number of Latin chants. Oh, and in the words of institution the priest used the older English translation of calix as "cup" rather than "chalice".

In this thread we can explore and celebrate together the diversity within our Church and our liturgy.

89brone
Ago 1, 2021, 4:21 pm

Im glad to here these amendments, I remember seeing mass said on the hood of a jeep in Vietnam, speaking of which while on a patrol there we came to a clearing and to my surprise stood a most beautiful RC church. The priest came out seeing us ugly Americans was apprehensive to say the least. A lot of us were catholics and we unabashedly asked for his blessing, Kneeling down he gave us the same blessing as at home it was my first experience of the Universal Church. punt huh?

90John5918
Editado: Ago 2, 2021, 4:34 am

>89 brone:

Thanks for this. Mass on the bonnet (hood on your side of the Pond) of a jeep is a good example of how there can be exceptional circumstances when the normative "paraphernalia" of the Mass are put aside for particular reasons. I think "pastoral necessity" has always allowed a degree of pragmatism, particularly on the part of missionaries (and also military chaplains), even in the days when the Church was generally more rigid.

Having lived away from my native country for two thirds of my life, I too really appreciate the universality of our Church, catholic with a small "c". I can go to Mass in any country in the world and recognise, follow and participate in it, even if I don't know the language, whether the Mass is celebrated on a grand high altar, or on the bonnet of a jeep, or on a coffee table, or on a lop-sided makeshift altar, or under a huge baobab tree (I've heard more than one bishop in the Sudanese war zone describe a tree as his "cathedral" after the destruction of churches), or standing in several inches of muddy water (in which case genuflecting is not recommended for those wearing white albs!), or in a mud-walled chapel with scorpions and snakes dropping out of the thatched roof, or deep in the African bush at night with the only light apart from starlight coming from a huge bonfire and a small solar lamp for the priest to read the missal, or with bombs falling around us in the midst of a civil war - or in London's Westminster Cathedral, or the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in DC, or at the end of the Camino in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela with pilgrims' rucksacks piled around the ancient stone pillars and with the botafumeiro swinging from side to side in clouds of incense. For me all of these have been sacred experiences. "Where two or three are gathered in my name..." (Matthew 18:20).

But I'm also deeply conscious that our universality is not merely a privilege for the initiated but is above all a call to inclusivity. I find the writings of Fr Richard Rohr to be very inspiring on this point.

91brone
Ago 2, 2021, 7:28 pm

I believe Richard Rohr's universality is in opposition to the teaching of the Catholic church. Rohr is dedicated to Irenicism in one of his assessments of the Gospels he refuses to say anything about the hard words Our Lord had to say about various sins. His admiration for Simmone weil who said, "The tragedy of Christianity is that it came to see itself as replacing other religions instead of adding something to all of them" Rohr's quote with emphasis added was " I could not agree more". So John do you believe as Rohr believes That all the damned whether they be men, women, or fallen angels will experience "universal restoration" He is also quoted as saying that this was the real meaning of Christ's Resurrection. Therefore Purgatory is from mythology. Now you can argue the a couple of the church fathers gave this heresy some traction, Origen, Jerome, Augustine condemned it, So be it Rohr along with Luther, Calvan an a host of other reformers also believed that Apocatastasis is not heresy,

922wonderY
Ago 2, 2021, 11:57 pm

>91 brone: I know John will continue to engage with you, because he’s just that kind and generous. But please take your discussion of broader theological questions to another thread. This one is for sharing mass and worship experiences.

93John5918
Ago 3, 2021, 12:27 am

>91 brone:

Ah well, I think we are going to disagree on that one. The Franciscan order doesn't believe that Rohr is a heretic, and as far as I am aware the competent authorities in the Church have not condemned him as such.

I think that by definition "the damned" are, er, damned. The question would be who are "the damned"? Are there indeed any damned? But that's probably for another time and place which you could start if you are interested in pursuing it, not for a thread on our experiences of the Mass. Let's try and keep this one positive, interesting and non-condemnatory.

94brone
Ago 3, 2021, 1:22 pm

Sorry 2 Wondery, again i'm new here and would love to talk about the Mass. Yet in the mean time if you read something in the thread that you disagree with or that you know is contrary to the teaching of the Church you are to stay silent because these things are of a broader theology and condemnatory. I was tweaked by John to research Richard Rohr I did his writings on purgatory and Universalism are what is condemned, because he is a franciscan in good standing does not alter errors that he writes. and finally John you are right to say who are "the damned"? but if hell exists and it is occupied the church teaches there will be no restoration after judgement, Rohr writes in opposition to this teaching, I suggest we read (ccc1030) to refresh our memories. In closing if you wish my thoughts to go else where I will comply with your wishes....JMJ ....Marty

95John5918
Ago 3, 2021, 1:29 pm

>92 2wonderY: Thanks, Ruth.

>94 brone: I don't think anyone wants to shut down a conversation, simply to move it to an appropriate place. If you're interested in pursuing it, try starting a new thread with a suitable title, and then those who want to engage will know what they're discussing. Thanks for your understanding.

96brone
Ago 4, 2021, 9:28 am

Out of sight out of mind, I get it. Thanks for allowing me these few comments....JMG....Marty

97John5918
Ago 4, 2021, 9:40 am

>96 brone: Out of sight out of mind

No, that's not what is happening. Actually I was thinking of opening a new thread myself to assist you to pursue the topic, although it's not a discussion I am particularly interested in debating, but I'm not sure what is the most prominent point you are disagreeing with. Is it a discussion of Fr Richard Rohr and his views in general, or is it specifically about hell and "the damned"? Or something else? Anyway, I'll leave it to you.

98brone
Ago 5, 2021, 10:16 am

Let me ponder and pray about your questions and I will get back to you...JMJ...Marty

99brone
Ago 5, 2021, 8:52 pm

Let us agree if we can that we are not in opposition but perceive two aspects of a single truth....JMJ...

100John5918
Editado: Ago 6, 2021, 2:20 am

>98 brone:

Indeed. So many of the issues on which people get heated can be viewed in that light. Two aspects of a single truth, or sometimes simply looking at a truth through different lenses. And a recognition that the whole truth is larger than any of us can comprehend so we are always looking at only a part of it. And in all things, charity. Thank you. Deo gratias.

101John5918
Editado: Sep 12, 2021, 9:11 am

Mass this morning with two archbishops in the archbishop's private chapel. I'm staying at a church guest house next to the archbishop's small bungaiow in South Sudan, and we have a visiting archbishop from a neighbouring country who stayed at the guest house as the local archbishop's house is so small it doesn't have a guest bedroom. I have known our visitor for nearly twenty years and have worked with him on and off on conflict transformation and nonviolence during that period. I have been asked to write his biography, beginning next year. It was a surprise and a great pleasure for both of us to meet here, as we haven't seen each other for several years, the last time in Rome at a conference on the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative organised by the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. He is well known in the region (and in international peacebuilding circles) for his courageous work in conflict transformation.

He is travelling today to lead a retreat for priests and sisters, so he won't be celebrating a public mass, so I accompanied him to the local archbishop's private chapel for a 6.30 am mass. There were only five of us - the two archbishops, the local priest who is the national pastoral director, an Irish missionary and myself. We were all masked. The chapel is very small but there were so few of us that we were still relatively socially distanced. The visiting archbishop presided. We prayed the morning prayer from the Divine Office as part of the mass, and during the mass we also said a COVID prayer which has been printed on a card and is said throughout South Sudan. The sign of peace these days is a gesture rather than physical contact, with the presider saying, "Let us show each other a sign of peace" rather than "give each other". The archbishop's homily was short and personal, and the mass was over in one hour, after which we went back to the guest house and cooked a breakfast of bacon and egg for him, a rare treat in South Sudan!

Next Sunday he will preside at the main mass at the cathedral, but i will be out of town by then.

102John5918
Oct 7, 2021, 4:07 am

This week I find myself staying in a religious house run by a congregation of consecrated women, founded in France. I'm giving some orientation to a group of young African missionary priests on their way to South Sudan.

Morning mass was in the little chapel upstairs, with a view of the nice gardens through the open windows. The tabernacle is in the shape of a typical African house. The presider was a French-speaker, with a multinational, multicultural and multilingual congregation of about fifteen. Mass was in English, gospel reading and short homily in French, hymns in Kiswahili, English and French. In deference to COVID there was no sign of peace. For communion the chalice and paten were placed at the front of the altar and people reverently took the host and dipped it in the wine themselves, a fairly common practice in small community masses here. As well as the symbolism, it's also consistent with COVID distancing. The presider kept it simple with no extraneous verbiage. A pleasant experience.

103John5918
Oct 8, 2021, 3:17 am

Next day, same set up, but the mass was in French with first reading in English and hymns in Kiswahili and English. For a community which is mainly French speaking based in a country that speaks Kiswahili and English it's nice for them to have the opportunity for mass in French when they have some French-speaking missionaries staying. They had also planned to have a French mass yesterday but nobody could find the French missal!

104SaintSunniva
Oct 31, 2021, 6:25 pm

The deacon announced the Mass Intention the same couple (us) as last Sunday, to our surprise. A wee mistake. Our self-taught song leader thankfully had one good old song that the congregation could manage to sing properly, one of St. Columba's hymns.

105John5918
Nov 14, 2021, 2:48 am

Back in Juba, the capital of South Sudan. Sunday mass at the missionary chapel which I have described before. Mass used to be inside the chapel, but it is too small for social distancing, so these days mass is outside, under the trees. Probably about a hundred people, with many foreigners, including the US Ambassador and his bodyguards. The presider, a European missionary from a parish isolated deep in the swamps several hundred kilometres from Juba, and with 80% of his parish currently underwater due to the floods, amusedly remarked on how there was a clump of people to his right and another clump to his left but nobody directly in front of him, due to where the shade fell. It's dry season here, so no danger of rain, but in his own parish it will probably be a year before the floodwaters recede.

Mass was in English. Ironic perhaps that English is a second or third language for probably everybody there except the US Ambassador's party and myself, but English is the official language of the country and the language used by most of those present for communication amongst themselves. The singing, accompanied by African drums and rattles, was rather lacklustre, perhaps due to the social distancing. Africans were swaying to the music while people from other continents tended to remain rigidly still.

The presider preached a very good homily. The Prayers of the Faithful were spontaneous, from the congregation. We used the Eucharistic Prayer entitled "God Guides His Church along the Way of Salvation", a nice prayer which I haven't seen used very often. At the sign of peace we were invited to acknowledge each other with a sign rather than a physical handshake, in view of COVID restrictions. At communion the priest sanitised his hands before distribution. The mass lasted just under an hour, without feeling hurried in any way.

I was very conscious of nature, surrounded by different species of very old trees, as well as many birds and lizards.

106John5918
Editado: Mar 25, 2022, 1:37 pm

I meant to post this earlier but forgot. Last month I spent a few days in the town of Gulu in northern Uganda. I've been asked to write the biography of the archbishop, who is well known in the region for his personal courage and commitment to peacebuilding and human rights. I've known him for nearly twenty years and done odd bits of work with him, but this was a chance to spend a few days with him on his home ground. I was staying at the Comboni Sisters guest house a couple of minutes walk from his residence, his office, and his cathedral.

7 am weekday mass in the cathedral, which is a beautiful building. There's a large mural of the baptism of the Lord in the River Jordan off to the side of the altar, very appropriate as the archbishop's Christian names are John Baptist. The congregation was probably 150 or more, mostly nuns, seminarians and schoolchildren. Mass was in the Acholi language. Masks and social distancing were in place. As is now common, there was no physical sign of peace but we were invited to make some gesture of peace to those around us. A lay person assisted the priest in giving out communion, possibly a seminarian who had been commissioned as an acolyte.

As an aside, there was a US doctor staying in the guest house along with her husband, a permanent deacon, and they also attended mass. She is giving some support to medical projects in the archdiocese. He works in their home diocese in the USA in a ministry to circus and rodeo folk and other similar travellers, and has a striking business card describing him as "The Archbishop's Circus and Rodeo Guy"! All credit to him and his archbishop for an innovative and unusual ministry!

107John5918
Editado: Mar 25, 2022, 11:24 pm

This morning I went to visit one of our retired South Sudanese bishops who is in Nairobi recuperating from hip surgery and an infection after a fall. He's in his late eighties, but he seems to be recovering ok, can walk slowly with a zimmer frame, and remains cheerful and optimistic. He's staying in a missionary guest house. He is not robust enought to attend the community mass but has a private mass each day. Today I joined him for mass in the chapel. There were just four of us: the presider, who was a young African missionary priest who is supporting the bishop during his recovery, the bishop himself, his niece who is taking care of him, and myself. It's the feast of the Annunciation, and the day the Holy Father has chosen to consecrate Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. It's also the day when a new bishop is being ordained in South Sudan, an ordination delayed because he was shot last year. We prayed for all of these during the mass, as well as for the health of our bishop emeritus. He just sat with us and didn't don any vestments, in view of his health.

A quiet mass, in English, with Gloria and Creed, a simple song during the Preparation of the Gifts, the sign of peace made without physical contact, and communion under both kinds brought to each of us by the presider. I proclaimed the first and second readings.

108SaintSunniva
Abr 29, 2022, 4:15 pm

>107 John5918: Many years ago I met Bishop Macram Gassis of Sudan in Denver, and wonder now if this is the retired bishop in your note above. He signed a book for my friend who was with me, and gave her a powerful blessing, which she was recalling to me just a few days ago.

The Feast of Divine Mercy (the Second Sunday of Easter) was celebrated at my suburban parish last Sunday. Thankfully, almost no one is wearing masks any longer. During the sign of peace, some extended their hands to shake hands, but most of us prefer just a verbal The Peace of Christ to each other.

109John5918
Editado: Abr 30, 2022, 10:42 am

>108 SaintSunniva:

No, this was a different bishop, Bishop Emeritus Paride Taban, who is internationally renowned for his work on peace and reconciliation. This week I'm facilitating an ecumenical meeting in Kenya on peace in South Sudan, and he came to join the participants for lunch one day, wheeled in in a wheelchair. He got a rapturous welcome. He's in pain from his injury but is still remarkably cheerful and optimistic - "When you feel pain, you know you're still alive!" he laughs. If anyone is interested, his biography is called Peace Deserves a Chance and is very inspiring.

However Bishop Emeritus Macram Max Gassis is also in Nairobi and I see him regularly; I'll have lunch with him next week. He's in his early eighties now, still active despite his age and some health issues, still running pastoral and humanitarian activities in a part of Sudan which is inaccessible to its own bishop due to conflict. I'm glad you had the chance to meet him. A remarkable man. I wrote his official biography, published last year under the title An Angry Shepherd.

110SaintSunniva
mayo 12, 2022, 8:39 pm

>109 John5918: I will pass along your remarks about Bishop Gassis, and look forward to reading the biography you wrote.

Sunday Mass past was also Mothers Day. We went with friends to their large suburban parish in Florida. I wish I could remember details like you do, however one thing I do remember is how distracted I was by the professional musician who arranged and sang throughout, at a volume beyond my comfort. At any rate, at the end the priest asked the mothers to stand for a blessing.

111John5918
Jun 12, 2022, 11:56 pm

Doing Jesus’ Work (Even at Mass) Is a Kindness, Not a Distraction (National Catholic Register)

As Jesus said, ‘When you did it to one of the least of my brethren here’ — like a mother who has her hands full — ‘you did it to me’... Did I say the old couple took some of their attention away from worship? Some people would say so. Censoriously. They’d see it as irreverent. I don’t think that’s right. The man and woman’s kindness to the mother and children was part of their worship, because they were doing Jesus’s work in a small way, and work that needed to done...


A nice little reflection.

112SaintSunniva
Jun 15, 2022, 10:09 am

>111 John5918: I just read that this morning! Droll to think of it as doing Jesus' work my husband will be glad to know.
>109 John5918: re An Angry Shepherd I tried to get a copy, but could not.

113John5918
Jun 15, 2022, 1:23 pm

>112 SaintSunniva:

Sorry you couldn't get a copy. I've checked on amazon.co.uk and the ebook is there. Not sure about the US amazon.com though.

114SaintSunniva
Jun 16, 2022, 8:39 am

>113 John5918: I still only read regular books. But maybe I'll try and get an ebook of it.

115John5918
Editado: Jun 17, 2022, 12:06 am

>114 SaintSunniva:

Yes, I too prefer real books. It's a dilemma for a small Catholic publishing house like the Daughters of St Paul's Paulines Publications. On the one hand books about Africa should be published in Africa, small local publishers should be supported, and the communications ministry of these sisters is very valuable - they publish a whole load of resources for the African Church. On the other hand, they find it very difficult to get their books to international markets. Making an ebook available on Amazon is a viable first step for them..

116John5918
Jul 4, 2022, 4:49 am

Originally posted in another thread, but I thought it might be worth reposting here.

Pope Francis celebrates Mass in the Congolese rite: ‘Peace begins with us’ (CNA)

Amid singing, clapping, and dancing to traditional Congolese music, Pope Francis celebrated the Zaire Use of the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite in St. Peter’s Basilica on Sunday... About 2,000 people were present in the inculturated Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on the first Sunday of July. Women in brightly colored traditional dresses sang and danced as they prayed the Gloria. People clapped and shouted as Archbishop Richard Gallagher incensed the main altar. The gifts were brought up to the altar in a dancing procession. Religious sisters in the pews stepped from side to side together to the music... The Zaire Use of the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite is an inculturated Mass formally approved in 1988 for the dioceses of what was then known as the Republic of Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The only inculturated Eucharistic celebration approved after the Second Vatican Council, it was developed following a call for adaptation of the liturgy in "Sacrosanctum concilium," Vatican II's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. In a video message in 2020, Pope Francis said: "The experience of the Congolese rite of the celebration of Mass can serve as an example and model for other cultures.”

117SaintSunniva
Ago 7, 2022, 12:06 am

I went to my goddaughter's nuptial Mass today. It was held in a large suburban church in the Denver Colorado area, rather new, but old architectural style to the structure, with "in the round" within. The music was exceptional, given that the bride and groom are both musicians at a professional level, they asked friends to make up the choir, and play the piano. From the Bach-Gounod Ave Maria processional to an Aquinas hymn Godhead Here in Hiding, ending with Jerusalem, My Happy Home.
Her father, an ordained deacon of one year, gave the homily. There were many clerics including another deacon and three or four priests. Bride and groom both work as liturgical musicians, along with their day jobs and both come from large families, hence there were 8 attendants for each...the men in dark suits, the women in blue dresses, but none were matching. It was so pleasant! There were many grandchildren and many small children of guests, and given that, it was pretty quiet overall, except for one rascal who called out loudly as his father was carrying him out, "Mom, help me!"

118John5918
Editado: Sep 20, 2022, 5:27 am

I’m currently back in northern Uganda with the archbishop whose biography I am writing. This morning I attended the weekday mass at 7 am in the beautiful Italianate cathedral, completed in 1945. Mass was in Acholi, a language I don’t speak, but then the mass is the same mass whether it is in one of the hundreds of African languages, or English, or indeed in Latin, using the universal rite of the Church. I can barely remember when I last attended mass in a language which I understand!

There were about seventy people present, including a good number of religious sisters and brothers plus quite a few students from nearby Catholic educational institutions. The presiding priest was assisted by an adult Master of Ceremonies who might have been a seminarian, and two young altar boys.

The first reading was read by a chap walking with crutches – no discrimination against the disabled here. But I have to say the acoustics are terrible. It is one of my pet peeves. These older churches were built to accommodate lectors who could project their voices, and they don’t handle public address systems well at all. His voice reverberated around the church and it would have been very difficult to understand even if I knew the language. The priest then proclaimed the gospel from the altar instead of the lectern, a practice of which I generally disapprove. To be fair to him, the altar microphone worked much better than the one at the lectern, so perhaps it was a pragmatic rather than a liturgical move. The homily was short and low key, unusual for Africa, but what one might expect for a weekday morning mass.

Singing was good, and the church’s acoustics suited it well. The hymns were in Acholi but the tunes sounded like some of the old European Catholic hymns, some with almost a plainchant lilt to them. There were no bidding prayers nor sign of peace. An altar boy rang the bell at the epiclesis and words of institution during the Eucharistic Prayer.

An elderly missionary sister and the MC assisted in the distribution of communion. The archbishop told me the other day that he has commissioned a lot of special eucharistic ministers in his archdiocese so that holy communion can be taken to the Sunday prayer services at the many outstation chapels which have no priest. This is the pattern in Africa. A parish may have a couple of priests in it, but it may cover a huge area (I was once in a parish in South Sudan that was the size of Belgium), and may have dozens of outstations up to 100 km from the main parish centre, each run by a catechist who leads a prayer service on a Sunday; the priests may only get to visit each outstation two or three times a year. Recently the Holy Father has raised the status of the ministry of catechist, a welcome recognition that these women and men are the backbone of the Church in Africa and probably some other continents as well.

The mass lasted just under 25 minutes, unusually short for Africa, but what one might perhaps expect for a weekday mass. In many ways it reminded me of the weekday morning masses of my youth – quiet, prayerful, dignified, respectful, a small congregation, no unnecessary frills. Those masses were in Latin using the old Tridentine rite before Vatican II, but I see no difference in terms of dignity and respect with the current ordinary rite, which again makes me wonder why a small number of Catholics wish to return to the extraordinary rite. Perhaps many of them are too young to have experienced it as it was, so they have no way of comparing it with a well-celebrated mass according to the current ordinary rite? The archbishop assured me that it is not an issue in his archdiocese nor for the national bishops’ conference. There is absolutely no appetite here for the use of the outdated extraordinary rite.

119brone
Sep 19, 2022, 11:43 pm

The "appetite" for the ancient extraordinary rite is small and harmless whats your obsession with it....JMJ....Andrew Kim Tae-gon priest, and Paul Chong Ha-sang, and companions, Martyrs Pray for Us

120John5918
Editado: Sep 20, 2022, 5:28 am

Much the same again this morning. There was a second priest concelebrating, and he proclaimed the gospel from the lectern. Both the female lector and priest spoke a little further away from the mike so the sound didn't reverberate quite so much. We had some drums with the singing today.

121John5918
Editado: Oct 7, 2022, 7:22 am

My wife and I are staying in London with an old friend who is an Anglican vicar (indeed a prebendary, no less) so we attended an Anglican mass last Sunday. It's a "high Anglican" parish (AngloCatholic, Anglican Catholic, Catholic Anglican... my friend the vicar dislikes labels as much as I do!) and the similarities with a Catholic mass are striking, hardly surprising as both denominations built on early church practices when reforming their liturgy, moving beyond more recent traditions such as the Reformation or the Council of Trent.

The church was pretty full for the main Sunday mass. It was Harvest Festival, so the sanctuary was replete with offerings of food which would eventually find their way to a charity or food bank. The presider was the curate, assisted by a deacon and sub-deacon, neither of whom were ordained - both were lay people authorised to perform these liturgical functions. All were fully vested, as were the altar servers and choir. "Smells and bells" were there in abundance - high Anglicans take liturgical form very seriously. Singing was of course excellent, another part of the liturgy at which Anglicans excel. The gospel was proclaimed by the deacon, after a procession with the gospel book complete with incense and candles. My friend the vicar was present, wearing cassock, surplice and stole, occupying the seat reserved for that office, and she preached an excellent sermon, short and to the point. Communion was given under both kinds, another practice which is the norm in Anglican churches but still fairly patchy amongst Catholics, and they have a tabernacle with the reserved sacrament. After the mass there was coffee and biscuits, and by chance I met a chap I hadn't seen for almost fifty years - both of us were visiting friends and neither of us had known that the other would be there!

All in all a very enjoyable experience, a reverent and worshipful and yet lively mass.

122John5918
Oct 23, 2022, 2:31 pm

For various reasons I have found myself attending Anglican masses for four Sundays in a row, three of them in the church mentioned above and one in a different church. All were very reminiscent of Catholic masses. Two of the masses in this church were "high masses" with incense, bells, choir, etc, and one was the early morning mass using the old prayer book, no singing, just five of us in the side chapel where the mass was held, again very reminiscent of early morning masses in many Catholic churches. This church is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year, and clearly it has been AngloCatholic from the start, as can be seen by the old statues of saints around the church and the icons on the reredos. Interestingly the mass leaflets have the Sanctus and Agnus Dei printed in both English and Latin, and the "Alleluia" sung as a gospel acclamation is the old simple plainchant version which all older Catholics will remember.

Last Sunday I was staying with my niece in a very rural area. On Sunday morning I heard the bells pealing and followed the sound to the village church, where mass was just about to begin. A typical beautiful old English church. My eye was drawn to the war memorial - from one small village, three dozen deaths in the Great War and a dozen in World War II, with several families losing two or even three members. Once again a very competent sermon, and good singing. As I left I shook hands with the vicar and introduced myself. When he heard I was a retired Catholic missionary from Africa his warm words were, "We're honoured to have you in our church". I was also impressed that they are re-wilding their graveyard to protect various species of flora and fauna, while still ensuring that the graves themselves are tidy and accessible.

I have really been struck by the singing, and have enjoyed the old familiar hymns. I was struck by "Hail to the Lord's Anointed" as I had never noticed how closely connected the words are to Catholic Social Teaching (in a hymn written in 1821 and sung to a tune from 1644): "He comes to break oppression, to set the captive free, To take away transgression, and rule in equity. He comes in succour speedy to those who suffer wrong, To help the poor and needy, and bid the weak be strong. To give them songs for sighing, their darkness turn to light, Whose souls, condemned and dying, are precious in His sight." I also heard for the first time updated lyrics of the old favourite "Onward Christian Soldiers" - "Onward Christian Pilgrims". A much better description of who we are, and very much in keeping with the concept of a Pilgrim Church.

By chance I also found myself having lunch today with a British Anglican bishop, who coincidentally comes from the same town as me, the same age group, went to the same university, and knows quite a few of the same people that I do. Interesting.

123margd
Editado: Oct 26, 2022, 4:14 am

I love attending Mass or equivalent where I am visiting--gives a sense of the community. One Easter it was an Anglican service in Bangkok, and like you I was amazed that I barely needed to look at the prayer book to participate. (DH remained back at hotel with our newly adopted son, and I ventured out with our oldest. At the time the only Catholic church I was aware of was in a slum where taxis hesitated to venture after dark--found out later there was another near the (safer area around) US embassy. Anyway, I was pleased to find a pretty little Anglican church near our hotel.)

ETA: I think somehow I ended up in an "Anglican" church when I was in Ireland. Still not sure, but language was enough different that I'm pretty sure not RC. Offering plate came from behind, so I was not prepared, and passed it on rather than hold it up. Pew behind me not impressed, rattling my seat. (I did contribute to their building fund as I left.) Busybodies in all churches, looks like...

124brone
Oct 25, 2022, 10:11 pm

Correct me dear posters if Im wrong (again) as I get King Charles is the head of the Anglican Church he is the defender of the Faith and supreme governor of the Church of England a title he inherited from Henry Vlll (not Peter if I might be so bold) who in 1534 declared himself head so he could divorce Catherine and marry Anne so he could have a legitimate Male heir to the throne. Subsequently causing the deaths of countless opponents of his heresy, spawning other sects, Methodists, Congregationalists, Unitarians, Fundamentalists, Pentecostals,all the thousands of store front denominations in the US which before Henry were Roman Catholic. I personaly think Henry's beef was legit. Forced to marry his brothers wife Yuk! and still a kid by today's standards. Henry's own depravity and concupiscence yet proved a disaster for the True Faith in the Kingdom of England....JMJ....

125margd
Oct 26, 2022, 3:57 am

No lack of depravity and concupiscence (I assume--whatever that is) in RC church over the centuries, unfortunately... Our glass church. Put down the stones.

The Anglican / Episcopalian church (and the orthodox ones? maybe Lutherans?) are considered a bit unique by RCs in that the line of St. Peter wasn't broken? A curious turn should blow a certain poster's mind: a Hindu PM could have a small, but pivotal role in choosing bishops, should vacancies occur. (Kind of like Chinese Government involvement in choosing RC bishops in that country?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appointment_of_Church_of_England_bishops

The RC priest, married with kids, in church I used to attend is an Anglican convert. As I understand it, such priest-converts are usually attracted by the conservative elements in our midst. And so it goes...

126John5918
Editado: Oct 26, 2022, 10:33 am

>125 margd:

I was chatting with my vicar friend and an Anglican bishop about the role of the monarch and prime minister in choosing bishops. I believe some prime ministers have explicitly declined to do so, and have simply ratified whichever candidate is chosen by the Church. On the other hand, Margaret Thatcher is reported to have turned down the favoured candidate for the archepiscopacy of Canterbury. The monarch is a different category, as they are the head of the Church of England.

127brone
Oct 26, 2022, 10:10 am

well nobody corrected the "certain poster" Im not surprised a Hindu would have a say or a communist in china has a say in the appointment of "RC" bishops these days. Correct me if Im wrong (again) a Hindu is allowed to be PM in England but an RC cannot although us RCs in America know Tony Blair is a Catholic and has been for some time. We conservatives have no problem with Anglican vicars converting and becoming Catholic priests even if married thats nuttin new. As far as Lutherans the Catholic hierarchy including PF have secial affection, I could be wrong here too as youse guys know my posts are "muddled" and lack sources but I think a big ole statue of Luther himself was hauled into PVI hall and put on a pedestal, and did'nt they issue a commeration stamp in honor of his thesis heretical or not some 400 years ago....JMJ....

128brone
Oct 26, 2022, 10:42 am

I know, what about Boris? I suppose a closet catholic constitutes a real catholic, Boris was married a 3rd time in west minister and had his son baptized a catholic, how did he do all this well his 1st two civil unions are not considered marriages by the church so he got them annulled. Now Boris was baptized catholic brought up anglican and well technically he is a catholic although rarely if ever seen in an RC church. I will say Boris's catholicism was a big deal after 400 years of persecution and discrimination catholics by steath amazingly have a precarious position of influence, how precarious you say? Tony Blair hid his faith till he embedded himself in a nice swanky place in Miami Fl for fear of Orange backlash....AMDG....

129margd
Oct 26, 2022, 11:15 am

I don't think there was ever a legal barrier to a Catholic being English PM, though at one time it may have been politically inconvenient?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/12/catholic-prime-minister-no...

New legislation allows heir to British throne to marry an RC, though an RC can't become king/queen, which makes sense if they are to be head of Anglican church. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-32073399

130Dilara86
Oct 26, 2022, 1:09 pm

So, if I remember my British politics classes correctly, in the past, Members of Parliament had to take an oath that they recognised the King/Queen as head of church, effectively ensuring that they would be members of the Church of England, but that hasn't been the case since 1828 and the Sacramental Test Act.

131John5918
Dic 10, 2022, 1:55 am

I've just got home from Rome, where I participated in a Catholic Nonviolence Initiative conference in the huge rambling Casa la Salle.

On the final day we had a closing mass for about seventy people in a small modern chapel somewhere in the basement of Casa la Salle, presided by Cardinal Michael Czerny, prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, with US Cardinal Robert McElroy, two archbishops and two bishops concelebrating. The priests present did not vest nor formally concelebrate, which would have looked disproportionately male and clerical amongst such a diverse group in a small chapel. The mass was multilingual, with parts of it in Spanish, Kiswahili, French and English. African participants led a liturgical dance at the offertory. The cardinal's homily was competent enough, but not outstanding. One slight disappointment was that we only received the host at communion; I truly cannot understand why in so many Catholic masses, particularly small community celebrations such as this, receiving communion under both kinds is not the default position.

132John5918
Editado: Ene 7, 2023, 1:27 am

Slightly unusual in that I am not describing a mass which I attended but posting an article which gives some insights into mass in a beleaguered town in South Sudan. It's a town I worked in for many years, and the missionary priest referred to in the article is a friend and colleague of mine.

A church at the margins of South Sudan (Mercator Net)

Amid the suffering of civil war, an oasis of peace...

133SaintSunniva
Ene 8, 2023, 10:15 pm

>132 John5918: Thank you for this article!

134margd
Ene 14, 2023, 8:38 am

Not Mass, but not boring, either!
(My mum once took young-me to a Ukrainian Mass in Manitoba, a gilded affair and not boring, I can assure you!)

Montreal’s Great Blessing of Water calls for Ukraine peace
Anna Farrow | January 13, 2023

MONTREAL -- Carrying Cross, incense, candle, and icon, a contingent of Ukrainian Greek Catholics processed last week from Montreal’s historic Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours Chapel to the Clocktower that stands sentinel over the Old Port.

The worshippers who braved the bitter wind blowing off the cold, grey St. Lawrence River were present to celebrate the Great Blessing of the Water on the eve of Theophany. But they were equally there to pray for peace in their war-torn spiritual homeland across the sea. Amidst the ice and wind, it was not difficult to think with sympathy of Ukrainians enduring equally harsh environmental conditions on top of the privations of war...

https://www.catholicregister.org/item/35147-montreal-s-great-blessing-of-water-c...

-----------------------------------------------------------

The Eparchy of Toronto and Eastern Canada is a Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church ecclesiastical territory or eparchy of the Catholic Church in the eastern part of Canada, primarily Ontario. The eparchy is a suffragan in the ecclesiastical province of the metropolitan Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Winnipeg. (Wikipedia)

135John5918
Editado: Feb 6, 2023, 1:47 am

On Saturday we attended a wedding at St Austin's church in Nairobi, a famous church as it was the first Catholic mission in the interior of Kenya, founded by the Holy Ghost Fathers in 1899. It was a posh wedding. The groom's grandfather is a former cabinet minister, and the uncle a well-known high level political "fixer", so there were plenty of burly young security men in suits in attendance, with the little curly wires connected to earpieces. I found the cameramen (and they were all men) to be very intrusive, but I suppose that's the norm these days - if it doesn't appear instantaneously on Facebook or Instagram then it hasn't happened.

The mass began an hour late due to the previous wedding overrunning, and it lasted two hours. Mass was in English, with songs in Kiswahili, English and Latin. The parish choir was excellent, and the congregation joined in the singing lustily. There were some nice touches, such as the bridal party and their families bringing up the gifts at the offertory, but in general terms I'd say the mass was mediocre. The thirty minute homily was appalling. It was more pop self-help motivational gobbledegook than an exposition of the sacred scriptures and the sacrament, and the constant little (and not so little) interjections that he would be quick because we were running late just made it longer. The presider failed to mention at any point that the bridal couple themselves are the ministers of the sacrament of marriage, a key theological and catechetical point in my view. He also allied himself with the photographers, often stopping to pose the bridal party for a good photo. Communion was received only under one species, another of my personal bugbears.

What is interesting is the interface between the Christian marriage rite and the traditional African culture of marriage. The church wedding comes only after many other ceremonies between the two families. My wife was involved with some of them; as an old friend of the groom's mother she counts as an honorary auntie, and aunties play a major role in marriages. On the morning of the wedding she was up early with a lot of other "aunties", standing in the street outside the bride's family house singing loudly, asking them to give us their daughter. They respond with ritual challenges*, demanding particular songs, commenting on the quality of the singing, and eventually asking for a gift, a final part of the exchange of dowry.

What is very clear in the traditional ceremonies, and what, to his credit, was reinforced by the otherwise mediocre priest, is that African marriage is not just an alliance between two individuals but between two families. Not only were the couple's parents celebrating that they now had a new son and daughter, and the couple themselves celebrating that they each had new parents, but brothers, sisters and other relatives were now referring to their new siblings. The couple's parents were not referring to each other as "in-laws" but as new brothers and sisters. Great emphasis was also placed on the couple now being able to set up their own household and family.

* While one can identify some common features between many African cultures, Africa is a huge continent with hundreds of different cultures, so one has to be careful about generalising. This was a Kikuyu marriage, and their rituals may differ in many details from others. But the ritual challenges in song reminds me of one of the cultures I lived amongst in South Sudan where the young men of the groom's family would set out with spears to ritually kidnap the bride on the morning of the wedding. Her own brothers, again carrying spears, would resist, and there would be a ritual battle carried out in the form of a dance, with each side alternately advancing and retreating. Meanwhile her sisters would also be wailing and trying to prevent her from being taken, and she herself would be resisting. In the end, of course, she would accompany the groomsmen, and the marriage would go ahead merrily.

136John5918
Editado: Feb 8, 2023, 1:36 am

The papal mass in Juba, South Sudan, on 5th February 2023 can be watched at https://www.youtube.com/live/utKbMtljKZg?

I hasten to add that I wasn't in Juba for the ecumenical pilgrimage.

137John5918
Editado: Mar 3, 2023, 12:56 am

Communion under both kinds on Maundy Thursday (Tablet)

Priest will be permitted but not obliged to offer the chalice to their congregations, for the first time since March 2020...


I still find it bewildering why communion under both kinds is not a universal norm, the default position unless there are very serious reasons to make an exception, as there were during the COVID pandemic.

138John5918
Editado: Mar 13, 2023, 1:30 pm

I've just spent a week in South Sudan facilitating a workshop on nonviolence for ecumenical church leaders, and I was able to attend mass four times in five days, which is a very rare treat for me.

The three weekdays masses were at a Catholic pastoral centre just outside Juba which I have often spoken of before. Their resident priest was travelling and the normal supply priest was also indisposed, so they were without mass, but there were three Catholics priests participating in our workshop so we were able to provide mass for the community, also attended by the local congregation of religious brothers from next door. A couple of dozen participants each morning, including two Anglican archbishops, communion under both kinds, all done in less than forty minutes so we could go for breakfast before moving to the ecumenical prayers which began each day of the workshop. The Sunday mass was at the missionary chapel which I have also often spoken of. The presider was a young Ugandan missionary, a bit wordy for my taste, but he still managed to finish in 70 minutes. Communion under only one species, unfortunately. All four masses and singing were in English, and the congregations came from at least four continents and a variety of countries.

I noticed that the Anglican archbishops, both of whom I have known since long before they were even bishops, did not come up to receive communion, and I had a chat with one of them afterwards. He said he would have loved to, but he didn't want to cause any embarrassment.

We then began to reminisce about old times (as old men do!) and we recalled a meeting in Uganda about twenty years ago of all the Catholic and Anglican bishops of Sudan (as it was still one country then before the secession of South Sudan). The issue of who would lead daily worship could have been a thorny one, but the Anglican bishops approached the Catholics and basically said, "Look, we know that the Eucharist is very special for you, so we'll stand back and let you lead the worship every day". The Catholic bishops responded by allowing the Anglicans to receive communion every day. Only the bishop presiding at the mass and one other to assist him vested and stood at the altar; all the other Catholic bishops sat in the pews with their Anglican brothers. I still have a vivid picture in my mind of the Catholic archbishop giving holy communion to the Anglican archbishop, while a visiting Vatican archbishop looked on benignly! That week of masses was certainly worthy of being noticed and celebrated, but I have refrained until now from writing about it publicly as I have had experience of right wing Catholic vigilantes who trawl the internet looking for things they can make a fuss about. Now almost all of the participants in that prophetic event, both Catholic and Anglican, have either gone to their heavenly home or are so firmly entrenched in their retirement that they are beyond being harassed, so I share this mass report with members of this LT group

139John5918
Abr 21, 2023, 12:02 am

Priest holds mass in Irish pub after church closure (BBC)

A priest has revealed that he turned an Irish pub into a makeshift church after he couldn't find a venue for Sunday mass. Father Michael Cusack from County Galway is a parish priest in Luxembourg. He said he was "stuck for a place to go" after his church closed for renovations. "We have a big congregation, over a thousand in number. I checked several churches here (Luxembourg) but times clashed." He said finding an alternative venue was beginning to seem like an impossible task, but a friend suggested the owners of a local Irish pub... Father Michael did show up and held mass for two Sundays in a row, until he found somewhere else to hold service. The pub is normally closed on Sundays, but Father Michael said it opened "after the second mass" and they had "wee pints of Guinness"... "We had a lovely afternoon and a bit of singing. Life ticks on."


Wish I'd been there!

140John5918
Jun 4, 2023, 11:25 pm

>108 SaintSunniva:

Sadly Bishop Emeritus Macram Max Gassis died yesterday, aged 84. His health had been poor for many months and he was being cared for by his nephew in the USA, who is a doctor. A great man, a fighter for justice, peace and human rights who will be sadly missed but whose legacy will live on. He had been a friend and mentor to me for almost forty years. May he rest in peace.

141John5918
Editado: Jun 19, 2023, 12:27 am

>140 John5918:

Yesterday we attended a requiem mass for Sudanese Bishop Macram. It's complicated as he died in the USA and is due to be buried in Sudan but can't be at the moment because of the war there (indeed there are unburied bodies strewn all over Khartoum, and I recently heard from a Sudanese priest who says he is spending his whole time collecting and burying dead bodies), so he has been buried temporarily in the USA and will be exhumed and reburied in Sudan later. Apart from the funeral mass in USA, there has been this mass in Nairobi, Kenya, and next week there will be one in Juba, South Sudan.

Mass was at the shrine of an East African missionary society, the Apostles of Jesus, in Nairobi, whose members are working in the late bishop's diocese. Mass started more or less on time, but in true Sudanese style there was hardly anyone there at the beginning, but by halfway through the church was full. The presider was the Apostolic Nuncio to South Sudan and Kenya. There were about twenty priests concelebrating, including Apostles of Jesus, the late bishop's Comboni confreres, and priests from his own diocese in Sudan as well as dioceses in South Sudan. Altar servers included both girls and boys, and the reading and prayers of the faithful were proclaimed by women. Singing was in English, Arabic and Kiswahili and, to be honest, was rather mediocre, although the sanctus was one which everyone (even the choir!) seemed to know and was sung lustily and in tune. The archbishop intoned the preface and some other parts of the mass - I hadn't realised that he had such a good voice. The homily by a Comboni priest was rather mediocre. As is common on this continent, the procession with the gifts included fresh fruit and vegetables. Communion was only offered under one kind, the chalice being reserved for the priests. The mass lasted less than two hours.

After communion there was a short speech by the nuncio in which he summed up the late bishop very succinctly and movingly. Tributes were read by representatives of the President of the Republic of South Sudan and the Chairman and C-in-C of the liberation movement which controls a large part of the late bishop's diocese in Sudan. After mass we retired to a marquee for speeches, songs and poems which included grassroots women and youth from Sudan and South Sudan, international donors and partners who had supported his pastoral and humanitarian work, a leading Kenyan doctor who had treated the bishop for 25 years, his Kenyan lawyer, and my humble self. We were then treated to lunch featuring Sudanese food.

The mass was recorded and can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/live/-Bgzq_NhGD4? and the key part of the nuncio's talk begins around 1:05:35 and lasts about nine minutes.

142John5918
Editado: Jun 22, 2023, 11:33 am

A very different mass today. Our local community held a celebration to bless the new rooms they built on the village school and to thank my wife and I for our support in constructing them. Mass was outside in the open air as neither the school nor our little Catholic chapel has room inside, with a table covered with a smart white altar cloth as a makeshift altar. The congregation was made up of the two hundred or so schoolchildren, their teachers, the school committee, the local chief and elders, and a lot of other people from the village. The school is mostly primary, but there is now one class of secondary (high) school, with twelve students - unusually seven are girls and only five boys.

Mass started an hour or so late, but nobody really cared. When you go to that sort of celebration you know you'll be there for most of the day! Mass lasted about 90 minutes, and was in Kiswahili, with a few words of English thrown in for my benefit. Singing was unimpressive, as there were only two hymnbooks, but the two women who had them sang lustily, with the rest of the congregation joining in sporadically. The homily was in Kiswahili so I couldn't follow it, but my wife tells me it was very good for the schoolchildren. My wife and I were the only two who took holy communion.

After mass the priest went round and blessed the new rooms, using a bunch of freshly picked grass to sprinkle the holy water. We hadn't met him before. Our village has an outstation chapel, but the parish, with its main church 30 km away, was recently divided into two, and we find ourselves in the new parish, which is also about 30 km away from us. The new one used to be just an outstation, but with a permanent brick and cement church, and I remember going to it 30-odd years ago when it just had a catechist. Our own outstation chapel is made of corrugated iron, but it has been there thirty or more years and was reportedly the first building in the village apart from Maasai homesteads made of wattle and daub, plastered in cow dung. Having examined it closely I notice that corrugated iron sheets were much thicker and sturdier in those days than they are now!

143John5918
Editado: Jul 2, 2023, 1:03 pm

Very different again today. We're staying with a priest friend in South Africa and we went to mass at his parish church in an affluent suburb of Pretoria. The church is about 15 years old and can seat thirteen hundred, although there were only two or three hundred there today. It was cold in church in the South African winter, but the architecture also had a rather cold bare feel to it. The congregation was culturally and racially mixed, as one might expect in the "Rainbow Nation".

Mass started late, but that was our fault as the priest had to drive back to his house after the first mass to collect us! Mass lasted about 90 minutes, and he was assisted by a permanent deacon, boy and girl altar servers, and women readers and eucharistic ministers. The presider preached an excellent homily. Mass was in English, with singing in English and another of South Africa's eleven official languages, as well as the Kyrie in Greek and the refrain for the Gloria in Latin. The choir, about thirty strong, was excellent, and they were able to lead the congregational singing rather than putting on a performance. There was no organ or any other instrumental accompaniment. Communion was only the host, not the chalice, but the priest explained to me later that many people are still nervous about infection following the very strict COVID regime, so there is some resistance to reintroducing it, although at weekday masses they do receive under both kinds.

In this parish, on the first Sunday of every month they recognise and have a special blessing for those whose birthdays or wedding anniversaries fall during the month, as well as those who are pregnant, engaged or preparing for marriage. A nice touch.

144John5918
Editado: Ago 13, 2023, 9:14 am

This weekend I was at a small Pax Christi International meeting in a religious sisters' retreat centre in Nairobi. There were a couple of dozen people present, and I was there as a speaker on the experience of nonviolent action in South Sudan. Unusually for a Church-related meeting at this level, the women considerably outnumbered the men, although there were two veteran male peace activists there, and it was a privilege meeting them and hearing the inside stories about some rather well known events in local history in which they were involved. It was also very moving to hear the stories of some of the nuns working in South Sudan.

Mass this Sunday morning in the simple hexagonal chapel was presided by an Ethiopian Jesuit who is a professor and spiritual director at their nearby college. We were only about ten participants, as many had already left and the French speakers were going to a French mass somewhere else later. Mass and singing were in English, with the final hymn in Kiswahili - it was actually the well known old hymn "Ave, ave, ave Maria" translated into Kiswahili (Salaam Maria) but sung to the original European tune. The homily was a good reflection on the readings of the day but also on nonviolence. I was struck by one sentence in it, that violence is evil and not the will of God, and that includes violence done in the name of justice! Holy communion was under both kinds, the participants serving themselves from the chalice and paten on the altar, as is common practice here in small community masses. The mass lasted about fifty minutes, including the twelve minute homily.

145John5918
Editado: Sep 20, 2023, 8:59 am

Back in that same pastoral centre six months later and once again the rare opportunity for daily mass three days in a row. I'm facilitating an assembly for a couple of dozen religious priests, sisters and brothers from four continents and I don't know how many countries - Australia, England, Germany, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Kenya, Malta, Peru, Poland, South Sudan, Spain, Tanzania, Uganda and possibly more. We have a couple of South Sudanese sisters with us who are refugees from the fighting in Khartoum, having made the difficult and dangerous overland journey.

Mass has been in English each day, lasting about 45 minutes, with about three dozen people present. Three different presiders from Ireland, South Sudan and Uganda. Short homilies. Communion under both kinds except on the first day when a young Polish priest who was concelebrating didn't realise and consumed all the wine before the presider could warn him! Most of the priests didn't dress up and formally concelebrate but simply sat with us punters in the pews.

Singing in English, a mixture of modern folky hymns and old favourites such as Soul of My Saviour, Sweet Sacrament Divine and Immaculate Mary. In much of the English speaking Church in the Global North you'd hear only one type of music or the other, but no such hang ups here. The new hymns tend to be more scriptural, while the traditional ones are more devotional, and there's room for both. Unfortunately though African congregations tend to sing European hymns very slowly, a bit dirge-like, whereas they keep up a more lively pace when singing African hymns.

146John5918
Sep 29, 2023, 11:35 am

Another relatively rare event, mass in our village. In the six years that we have lived here, our outstation is now served by its third different parish after being transferred twice, so maybe the priests in the new parish (which is itself literally a new parish as it was formerly an outstation which was recently created as a parish) will come more regularly.

Today it was a school mass, with a special prayer and individual blessings for the children who will be sitting their primary school leaving exams in the near future. Mass was in the open air, with a couple of hundred children plus forty or so teachers, parents and elders. Mass was in Kiswahili with a few words of English here and there, and songs were all in Kiswahili. What I could understand of the homily was quite good, aimed at the children, but it also included a very nice little reflection on images of God, basically affirming that we cannot encompass God in our human images nor imagination. Only three people apart from the priest received Holy Communion - my wife and I plus one schoolboy.

I reflected a little on the way the diocese serves the Maasai community, a pastoralist people who still maintain a lot of their traditional culture. In the days when missionary priests served the diocese, some of them still alive albeit retired, they learned the Maa language and spent up to three weeks every month away from the main parish centre, sleeping in remote Maasai villages on goatskin rugs, eating local food, and generally embedded themselves in the local community. Now there are Kenyan diocesan priests, almost all from other communities, and unfortunately most of them do not learn Maa, and only celebrate mass in Kiswahili, which many older rural Maasai are not very familiar with. They stay in the parish centres, and as we have discovered, you're lucky if they come to the more isolated outstation chapels at all. I believe there is still one elderly Tanzanian missionary who still does it the old way, but he will soon retire. The end of an era, and a stark example of the difference which is often seen between missionary and diocesan priests.

147John5918
Editado: Nov 19, 2023, 3:39 am

We're in UK this month. Two different mass experiences two Sundays in a row.

Last Sunday, the Feast of All Saints, we were in a small Anglican church in a small village on the south east coast of England. The church, dating back to Saxon times, was packed. The priest is openly gay. It was a lively liturgy, perhaps a bit too theatrical for my taste, but obviously much appreciated by the local congregation, including children. It's a very inclusive parish.

Today we're in Wales, where we went to mass in the local Catholic church, a Victorian building. Today was Remembrance Sunday, so red poppies were much in evidence (we also wore the white poppies of the Peace Pledge Union) and the priest referred to it in his homily without going overboard. Well attended, albeit not packed. It was a visiting priest, who kept it short and simple without any feeling of rushing. I appreciated the fact that he wasn't too wordy, although his voice was a bit dull. It's many years since I have seen so many tall candles in a Catholic church - six on the main altar, and six more on the old altar on the wall behind it, where the tabernacle is located. We had communion under both kinds, which is by no means universal in UK. Communion was distributed from the communion rail, so communicants could either stand or kneel, with a female lay minister administering the chalice. We had a couple of the good old hymns, including Abide With Me, and the Welsh favourite, Guide Me O Thous Great Jehovah, sung to the tune Cwm Rhonda. A moment of confusion when the priest launched into the Apostles' Creed instead of the Nicene Creed without announcing it, but both were in the mass leaflet so the congregation soon got back in step with him.

We've had the chance to pop in to a number of old British churches to say a brief prayer, light a candle and donate a few bob. These have included the beautiful and impressive St Alban's Cathedral, probably first founded as a Benedictine Abbey around 700 CE, with parts of the current cathedral dating to Norman times. Alban was Britain's first saint and martyr. There are doubts as to exactly when he was martyred, but it's often dated around 300 CE.

148John5918
Editado: Nov 19, 2023, 3:57 am

Another mass in a British Catholic church, this one in the north west. Looked to me like a fairly modern church, probably post-war but pre-Vatican II. This was the Saturday evening mass of the 33rd Sunday. Maybe a hundred or so in the congregation. Music was led by a guitar, but wasn't brilliant and I didn't know most of the hymns. Communion was only offered via the host, although it was nice to see the priest going to give communion to disabled people in the congregation before attending to the rest. A good collection of altar servers including a middle aged man and young boys and girls.

This parish is staffed by two young Nigerian missionary priests, who cover three churches which were previously independent parishes. One of them concelebrated, but the presider was a young Cameroonian missionary priest from the Mill Hill Missionaries, who was there to preach an appeal on behalf of Missio, the pontifical charity for funding missionary work, funding "the Church of the future... We build Church infrastructure and support those in need, regardless of background or belief, in 157 countries" (link). He spoke well and had a good singing voice, intoning several parts of the mass including the kyrie eleison. I had a good chat with him afterwards as we know many of the same people in the missionary world.

149John5918
Nov 20, 2023, 3:04 am

And it's been quite an exposure to British Catholicism as we went with friends to a baptism the following day. A much newer church, two babies being baptised at midday after the morning mass had finished, quite a full church with families and friends of both babies. A white haired priest who did the baptism very well, explaining each symbol as we went along, involving the congregation and making clear the community aspect of baptism, very relaxed and easy going, very confident having obviously done this so often before, but still making it a special occasion for the families involved rather than just a routine job for him. I didn't get the chance to chat to him, only to shake his hand and congratulate him on a job well done, but I learned later that he is covering several parishes, rushing from one to the other without giving the appearance of being rushed. Well done, mate!

The Church teaches that baptism is best done as part of the community mass, and I agree with the reasoning for this, but I have to say that I'm tending towards the idea that infant baptisms might be best done separately from mass, as it is shorter, less stressful and more special for the families, and saves the whole parish from having to face a longer mass (with the consequent problems in the car park if the end of mass coincides with the beginning of the next mass) as well as from the additional squalling of babies (many of the guests at the baptism were young couples with their own babies in tow - we had a squalling one in the row behind us but a beautifully happy one in the row in front which my wife got to cuddle!) Adult baptisms should definitely be celebrated during mass, though, preferably as part of the Easter Vigil.

150John5918
Editado: Nov 25, 2023, 3:35 am

Yet another experience of English Catholicism at the London HQ of Missio, the pontifical missionary society. A beautiful little chapel, a mid-week midday mass with Missio's national director and a small congregation, quiet, respectful and meditative, communion under both kinds, all over in 25 minutes without any sense of rushing.

151John5918
Editado: Dic 18, 2023, 1:06 am

Mass at 7.30 am this morning in our village chapel, an uncommon occurrence which will hopefully become more common as our outstation chapel has recently been assigned to a new parish with new priests, not diocesan but from the Passionist religious order. This morning the priest announced that we will be having mass on Christmas morning.

Mass was in Kiswahili, with a few words in English from time to time for my benefit. It lstarted on time (in fact we were a couple of minutes late, arriving just as the confiteor began) and lasted about 50 minutes. There were about 15 people present, with more children and teenagers than adults. Singing was a bit desultory, but not surprising given such a small congregation. About half the congregation received communion, which was only the host, not the chalice.

The homily was in Kiswahili and I couldn't follow it, although I did recognise a few words from the Arabic (about two thirds of Kiswahili vocabulary is from Arabic), but there were occasional sentences in English, and one that struck me was the Advent theme that we must be ready to recognise and welcome Christ when he comes to us. I reflected on whether I recognise and welcome Christ in my neighbour, my enemy, someone who has wronged me, someone who irritates me, someone from a different race, religion, nationality, ethnicity, social class, gender, sexual orientation or whatever. Very challenging.

Last week I had an old retired missionary friend staying with me. He had been in this diocese nearly fifty years ago, and was visiting some of the old mission stations where he had worked. I took him to our parish church, about an hour's drive from here, to meet the two Passionist priests, who gave us a great welcome and were very interested to hear what the diocese had been like all those years ago. A contrasting experience when I took him to another parish an hour's drive in a different direction, where we couldn't even get past the uniformed security guard at the gate. He told us the priests were out. We asked whether there was anyone else there - catechist, nuns, office staff - but he was adamant that we couldn't come in. Not the model of Church which I grew up with. Mind you, I've experienced something similar in the USA, where it seems many parish priests are like a CEO and you have to get past hordes of secretaries and other minions before you can meet the big man. But we were disappointed not to be able to have a look at the church, which my friend had known fifty years ago and I was familar with thirty years ago.

Edited to add: Our priest had to rush away immediately after mass as he had to go for mass in another outstation abot 50 km away. That's very much the model of Church in rural Africa - a central parish serving many outstation chapels. In South Sudan forty years ago I worked in a parish the size of Belgium with outstations up to 100 km away, with not a single all-weather road in the whole parish (indeed one could say the same of the whole of that diocese). In the wet season it could take days of riding in dug-out canoes and wading chest-deep through crocodile, snake and bilharzia infested swamps to reach some of them, so it's not surprising that they would only get a visit from a priest once or twice a year if that.

152John5918
Editado: Dic 25, 2023, 2:49 am

Christmas Day. We woke up to a "white Christmas", but not with snow. Everything was white as, at our altitude of 1,900m, we were surrounded by low clouds like a thick white fog until the sun rose higher and the clouds retreated. We had mass in the Catholic chapel in our village, the first time we've seen a Christmas mass here in the seven years we have lived in this village. Apart from that, it was unremarkable, a one hour mass very similar to last Sunday's which I reported in >151 John5918:. Once again the priest couldn't hang around, as he had to go for mass in the main parish centre, while his colleague had already set off for the outstation chapels on the other side of the parish. Yesterday my wife brought a live cedar tree sapling for the chapel, and it was decorated by a few of the chapel's regulars. After Christmas it will be planted in the grounds of the chapel.



Later today we'll be having a "pot luck" Christmas lunch with half a dozen of our neighbours, at a home about 15 km away. Our contribution is a goose, which I have stuffed and put on the barbecue to roast (our oven exploded a couple of years ago so we can only use the barbecue now). Yesterday my wife took some mince pies and vegetables to the hostess as part of our contribution.

Merry Christmas!
Este tema fue continuado por Mass Report (2024).

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