Worship Times

Unjust desserts

We know the Mass is a heavenly banquet, but ML was not aware it included dessert. According to a report in the September 20 issue of the National Catholic Reporter, a dozen protesters disrupted a Sunday Mass in Nantes, France, by throwing pies at the liturgical leaders. The report does not say which Sunday the pie-fling took place, but ML is sure the psalm of the day must have been Psalm 34 — "Taste and See."

The demonstrators were protesting John Paul II's visit to France.

—NW

Webs-R-Us

Now you can get your parish on the web. Catholic Online and The Catholic Catalog Company have joined together to provide web sites free of charge to all 19,500 Catholic parishes in the United States. According to the two companies, local parishes will have the opportunity to share local parish information online with both their parishioners and the entire U.S. Catholic community. In addition to the web site, parishes will have free e-mail access.

Financing for the web sites and Internet access will be subsidized by Catholic Online and The Catholic Catalog Company as well as by online space advertisements or paid sponsorships. Contact Catholic Online at their e-mail address, 76711.1715@compuserve.com.

Webs for the dead

Parishes aren't the only thing you can find on the 'net. Now, thanks to Fr. Henry Wasielewski, you can shop for your casket while cyber-surfing. According to a report by Robert Bryce in the September 13 National Catholic Reporter, Wasielewski became disgusted with the high price his parishioners had to pay for funerals. So the 66-year-old, semi-retired priest got a few mortician-friends to send him the wholesale prices of caskets and other funeral-related information. He then posted them on a web site titled "Funerals and Ripoffs."

Wasielewski, who is based in Tempe, AZ, has been active in providing funeral information since 1982 when he and several others founded the inter-faith Funeral Information Committee.

You can dial up his web page at www.xroads.com/~funerals/.

—NW

Shift happens

"[Catholics] are quite aware that 'church' does not mean what it used to. Hazy though the notion may still be for many, there is common awareness that the church is the people of God, that all the baptized, and not just the ordained, share in mission and ministry and therefore in responsibility for the church and the world."

That, according to Bernard Cooke in an article last year in the National Catholic Reporter, is a reason to hope for "unprecedented development" in the future of the church. Cooke says that if the liturgy and sacramental rituals are done well, "they have the power to form community, to give meaning to the life of individuals and groups, to provide structures that change as life changes and truly to speak the presence of God among us, that is, be sacrament."

Cooke sees the impetus for this future development flowing from the cultural shift society as a whole is experiencing. In another NCR article dated August 9, 1996, Cooke said that our perception of reality "has not only changed, it has become fluid. The implicit image of society as a settled, divinely appointed, up-and-down hierarchical arrangement, with superior and powerful monarchs ruling those lower down and powerless, is being replaced by the horizontal imagery of 'community.'" He thinks this shift has a direct impact on the development of the idea of church as communio, an idea articulated at the Second Vatican Council.

John E. Linnan, in an address to the National Federation of Priests' Councils last spring, told his brother priests that this shift would also affect them. "This culture is still emerging .... We don't yet know how much it will change the customary patterns of American life. No one escapes the impact of this society on his or her life. Not the church, not its people, not its priests."

Linnan sees one impact on parish life as a shift in responsibility. "Responsibility for transmitting the tradition now rests primarily and most basically with the people, not the ministers. It follows that responsibility for the parish, however organized, lies with the people," he said. "The locus of much that the parish has traditionally done in transmitting the tradition must shift to families or to other groupings. People can no longer depend on church functionaries to bear the principal responsibility for transmitting the tradition."

Even bishops and popes are affected by this shift in culture. Last June, Archbishop John Quinn responded to John Paul II's request to publicly address how papal ministry might be re-shaped to meet what the pope called "a new situation." In a speech at Campion Hall in Oxford Quinn said, "The 'new situation' is shaped by the shattering of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Communist dictatorships, by the awakening of China and her movement into the political and economic world of the 20th century, by the movement toward unification in Europe, by a new and spreading consciousness of the dignity of women, by the arrival of an immense cultural diversity in the Church, by the insistent thirst for unity among Christians. This new situation is not only political, economic, cultural and technological. It is marked as well by a new psychology. People think differently, react differently, have new aspirations, a new sense of what is possible, new hopes and dreams. In the Church there is a new consciousness of the dignity conferred by Baptism and the responsibility for the mission of the Church rooted in Baptism."

Quinn went on to call for a new ecumenical council to deal with issues of collegiality and papal reform, suggesting such a council might be called to mark the beginning of the third millennium.

The editorial team at ML has also been concerned about this shift in our culture and the way it affects the church — particularly the local parish. ML intends to gather parish leaders together to discuss how the increased responsibility of the laity and the emphasis on communio will change the way a parish functions in the next decade. By looking at the parish through the lenses of worship, sacraments, evangelization/catechesis, and administration, ML hopes to develop a springboard to further, concrete action. Everyone in the ML community — pastors, catechists, liturgists, parish council members, liturgy committee members — is encouraged to come and share his or her insights. Write to ML at 160 E. Virginia St., #290, San Jose, CA 95112 for more information or see the description of the event on page 22.

—NW

New BCL director

Fr. James P. Moroney, a priest from the diocese of Worcester, MA, has been designated as the Executive Director of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops' Secretariat for the Liturgy. Moroney, who succeeds Msgr. Alan Detscher, was only recently appointed to the secretariat as an associate director. Before that he served as the chairperson of the FDLC Board of Directors in addition to his duties as pastor of Mary, Queen of the Rosary Parish in Spencer, MA.

Moroney earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester and a bachelor's degree in sacred theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in 1979. He also holds a licentiate in sacred theology from The Catholic University of America. Moroney was ordained in 1980.

—NW