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Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam
Bulletin for April 2010
Sunday Mass Times
0730 Mass in Thai
0930 Mass in English
Weekday Mass Times
18.00 Mass in Thai in Chapel of Building 3
18.00 Mass in English in Chapel of Building 2 [when there are English-speaking retreatants]
HOLY WEEK
The Passion (the acclaimed BBC Film)
This superb film will be shown the Main Chapel
Part 1 on Tuesday 30th & Part 2 on Wednesday 31st March at 19.30 (7.30 pm)
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Maundy Thursday 1st April
The Solemn Eucharist of the Lord’s Supper at 19.30
Good Friday 2nd April
The Liturgy of the Passion at 19.30
Holy Saturday 3rd April
The Easter Vigil & Celebration of the Lord’s Resurrection at 19.30
Intentions of Pope Benedict XVI
APRIL
General: That every tendency to fundamentalism and extremism may be countered by constant respect, by tolerance and by dialogue among all believers.
Mission: That Christians persecuted for the sake of the Gospel may persevere, sustained by the Holy Spirit, in faithfully witnessing to the love of God for the entire human race.
Some Feasts in April
Thursday 1st Holy Thursday
Friday 2nd Good Friday
Saturday 3rd Holy Saturday & Easter Vigil
Sunday 4th EASTER SUNDAY
Thursday 22nd Our Lady,
Mother of the Society of Jesus
Friday 23rd St. George, Patron of England
Tuesday 27th St. Peter Canisius, S.J.
Thursday 29th St. Catherine of Siena,Co-Patron of Europe
Also in April
Tuesday 6th Chakri Day
Tuesday 13th Songkran – Thai New Year
Sunday 25th World Day of Prayer for Vocations
In May
Saturday 1st St. Joseph the Worker
Monday 3rd Ss Philip & James, Apostles
Tuesday 4th St Jose Rubio, S.J.
The Martyrs of England & Wales
Weds 5th Coronation Day
Collection
The Sunday Offertory Collection for the month of February was 22,383 Baht. We thank you for your very generous support of the mission & outreach of The Seven Fountains Spirituality Centre.
Pope’s Pastoral Letter to Irish Church
The Pope has written a Pastoral Letter to all the Catholics of Ireland, expressing his dismay at the sexual abuse of young people by Church representatives and the way this was addressed by local bishops and religious superiors.
He asks that the Letter be read with attention and in its entirety. The Holy Father speaks of his closeness in prayer to the whole Irish Catholic community at this painful time and he proposes a path of healing, renewal and reparation.
He calls on them to remember the rock from which they were hewn, particularly the fine contribution made by Irish missionaries to European civilisation, and to the spread of Christianity in every continent. Recent years have seen many challenges to the faith in Ireland, in the wake of fast- paced social change and a decline in adherence to traditional devotional and sacramental practices. This is the context in which the Church’s handling of the problem of child sexual abuse has to be understood.
Many factors have given rise to the problem: insufficient moral and spiritual formation in seminaries and novitiates, a tendency in society to favour the clergy and other authority figures, and a misplaced concern for the reputation of the Church and the avoidance of scandal, resulting in failure to apply existing canonical penalties when needed. Only by careful examination of the many elements that gave rise to the crisis can its causes be properly diagnosed and effective remedies be found.
FULL PRESS RELEASE
Summary of Pastoral Letter to Irish faithful (Vatican Information Service)
FULL LETTER
Holy Father’s Pastoral Letter to the Catholics of Ireland (Vatican Information Service)
Meditative/Contemplative Prayer Experiences you can download
livesimply is a challenge to live simply, sustainably and in solidarity with people in poverty.
Stay neutral, Thai bishops advise Catholics
Thai -land’s bishops have called on all Catholics to remain neutral in the current political conflict.
“This is a very sensitive situation. The Church shouldn’t take any side and judge who is correct or wrong as this will create more conflict,” Fathier Pipat Rungruangkanokkul, deputy secretary general of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Thailand (CBCT) told UCA News.
He noted that individuals have the right to support any side, “but as Church we have to promote mutual understanding.”
Thousands of supporters of fugitive former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, known as “red shirts,” have descended on Bangkok, demanding that the government hold snap elections.
Grenades have also exploded in some areas.
Bishop John Bosco Panya Kritcharoen of Ratchaburi, CBCT secretary general, said the bishops’ conference “is very concerned about this current situation.”
“We released a formal letter to every church [on March 12] asking for intense prayers, special Masses, sacrifices and silent meditation for peace in the country.”
During the March 16-18 CBCT meeting, “we prepared guidelines on the Church’s stand on this current situation now,” he said.
Archbishop Francis Xavier Kriengsak Kovitvanit of Bangkok is working on these guidelines, and the bishops “hope to release them to schools and churches by next week,” the bishop said.
Achara Somsaengsuang from the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace told UCA News that even though Thailand is a Buddhist country, Buddhist organizations themselves are very careful not to take sides in the conflict.
SOURCE
Bishops’ meet focuses on political crisis (UCA News)
An Online Retreat
A 34 week retreat for Everyday Life - A Ministry of the Collaborative Ministry Office at Creighton University.
http://www.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/cmo-retreat.html
Priests to the fore
The pendulum eventually had to swing the other way. Since the Second Vatican Council the Catholic Church has wrestled with the true significance of the common priesthood of the People of God based on Baptism. It rebalanced in many fundamental ways the relationship between priests and people. But in the process, the ordained priesthood has undergone a silent upheaval. Some reassertion of priestly identity was overdue, a reminder that the ordained priesthood is essential to the encounter with Christ through word and sacrament that the Church exists to foster.
Clearly Pope Benedict's inauguration of the Year for Priests, which starts next week, was not designed to undermine the place of the laity. It is arecognition, nevertheless, that especially in the developed countries of the West, the ordained priesthood is surrounded with problems. Numbers coming forward are falling; many who are ordained do not stay the course; those who remain can easily be dispirited and demoralised. The clerical sex-abuse scandal had many victims but it is rarely recognised that priests were among them. Many good priests felt ashamed and betrayed in their vocation by the despicable actions of a few. It even affected their body language, their ability to walk the streets with confidence and look the world in the eye.
Professionally, priests have come to feel an existential uncertainty as to their role. Many people in their congregations will be as well educated as they are, and have a working knowledge of theology that was almost non-existent 50 years ago. The laity in most parishes has taken on an active commitment to justice and peace. At diocesan level and nationally, lay people have taken on leadership functions. The decline in the use of the confessional has transferred the pastoral emphasis to less formal settings, a change which many priests welcome without being sure how to make best use of it. Are they laymen in a dog collar, whose job is to do good in the local soup kitchen? Are they, perhaps, social revolutionaries, leading their people out of political bondage? Or is there a more monastic or ascetic role for them as founts of spiritual wisdom? In the right circumstances all these answers are valid. There is no one model, though the priest's central place in the Church's eucharistic life is common to all of them. It is perhaps not surprising that newly ordained priests sometimes cope with this uncertainty by reverting to a more conservative version of their role, at least in dress, manner and liturgy.
For many priests the pastoral side is what first drew them to their vocation: the desire to help people in the most profound way possible by bringing them the truth of God's love. Teaching is a crucial part of it, by word and deed, to show by the example of one that the path to holiness is open to all. Good priests concentrate on what only they can do, and it is for that that they are most appreciated. The Year for Priests is an opportunity to renew the esteem and respect due to them for their years of training and formation in the service of others, for the sacrifices that entails, and for the authority they have received from the Church to stand in the place of Christ - at both altar and soup kitchen.
The Tablet 13/3/10
US Anglicans formally request Personal Ordinariate
The House of Bishops of the Angli -can Church in America the US Province of the Traditional Anglican Communion, have announced that they will formally seek to establish a Personal Ordinariate within the Catholic Church.
The announcement was made in a press release as follows:
“Orlando, FL - 1 pm EST - Bp. George Langberg
“Released by the House of Bishops of the Anglican Church in America, Traditional Anglican Communion 3 March 2010
“We, the House of Bishops of the Anglican Church in America of the Traditional Anglican Communion have met in Orlando, Florida, together with our Primate and the Reverend Christopher Phillips of the “Anglican Use” Parish of Our Lady of the Atonement (San Antonio, Texas) and others.
“At this meeting, the decision was made formally to request the implementation of the provisions of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum cœtibus in the United States of America by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.”
FULL STORY @
TAC Formally Requests Personal Ordinariate for USA (The Anglo Catholic)
LINKS
Traditional Anglican Communion in America
To help deepen your grasp of your Christian faith
THE HEYTHROP INSTITUTE FOR RELIGION ETHICS AND PUBLIC LIFE
www.heythrop.ac.uk/HIREPL
Thinking Faith is a free on-line publication of the British Jesuits.
The future of the Spiritual Exercises
Gerry W Hughes, SJ, the well-known British Jesuit, author and spiritual guide, spoke to Victor Edwin, SJ for the Indian Jesuit magazine, Jivan. Excerpts from the interview:
Religious indifference and skepticism seem to mark the life of many people in the West. How do Exercises help people to come closer to God?
In Augustine's words Deus intimior intimo meo. ‘God is closer to me than I am to myself'! The retreat-giver can never have enough practice in listening and so enabling the pilgrim to recognise more clearly what God is communicating.
How do you use Spiritual Exercises for promoting ecumenical relations in the UK?
I never use the Exercises in order to build up ecumenical relations, but I do try to ensure that all the retreats I give are open to people of all Christian denominations and none. Then God does the ecumenical work. It is astonishing. I have learned so much from pilgrims of other Christian/religious traditions about God, about the power of the Spiritual Exercises. And through making a silent retreat together, praying together in silence, people across the denominations find unity.
Can the Exercises have the space for relating with people of other faiths? Jerome Nadal was asked in the 16th century for whom these Exercises are suited. He answered, ‘For Catholics, for Protestants and for Pagans' I have done much of this kind of work and every experience has confirmed the truth of Nadal's words. I have also worked much with other Christian denominations in giving retreats and in training others, across the denominations, to give these retreats.
What would you suggest for promoting Exercises as an apostolic tool in increasingly post-Christian cultures?
Start doing it. There is an ancient rabbinic saying, ‘Do and you will understand'. To which one might add ‘Fail to do and you will never understand'.
Can the laity carry forward the legacy of Exercises in the West?
This is a most important question. Unless the laity are involved, there will be no promotion of the Exercises. There is a wealth of spirituality among ‘ordinary people' across the denominations and outside them. I have encountered this fact continually in the last 30 years. Spirituality is usually presented in religious terminology and language which fails to address peoples' deepest longings, so most people are not aware of their own spiritual gifts. If they do become aware of them, they are usually unable to find training/openings into this kind of work, unless they are relatively wealthy and have plenty of free time.
I know it is possible to involve the laity and train them in passing on the Exercises to others, and to do it at little or no expense and to organise non-residential training which does not interfere with working hours. I have seen it happen frequently. I know many gifted spiritual directors/retreat-givers who have developed their gifts in this way at little or no financial cost and in spite of living busy lives.
This way of working is very hard work, requires much thought, reflection, prayer and cooperation. The harvest is great: the labourers are remarkably few! This is important: If we are to do anything effective in promoting the Spiritual Exercises, we need to begin by facing the facts. Yes, great work has been done on promoting the Spiritual Exercises in the UK since Vatican II, through promotion of the individually-given retreat, but as far as the Jesuits are concerned, it tends to be work with the wealthier and more leisurely sections of the population. This is not a popular message. But facts speak louder than words!
Ricci is model for dialogue, mission
Italian Father Matteo Ricci, the 16th-century Jesuit known for his positive relations with the Chinese, is a model for dialogue and evangelization in the 21st-century globalized society, said speakers at a conference in Rome.
Father Ricci’s experience and writings remind people “that there are basic similarities in all human beings, in human nature: hope, suffering, questioning the meaning of life. We all share those whether we are Westerners or Chinese,” said Jesuit Father Augustine Tsang Hing-to.
Father Tsang was born in mainland China to a Catholic family, “but I escaped by swimming to Hong Kong — four hours to Hong Kong, at night — and then went to the States.”
The priest, who now teaches at Fu Jen Catholic University of Taiwan, spoke to Catholic News Service March 1 before speaking the next day at a conference marking the 400th anniversary of Father Ricci’s death
FULL STORY
Ricci is model for dialogue, mission in globalized world, speakers say (Catholic News Service)
Two antennas met on a roof, fell in love and got married. The ceremony wasn't much, but the reception was excellent.
A set of jumper leads walk into a bar.
The bartender says, 'I'll serve you, but don't start anything.'
Two peanuts walk into a bar, and one was a salted.
A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm, and says:
A beer please, and one for the road.'
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Laus Deo Semper
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