The wounds of the church and the eucharistic mystery

In the upheaval surrounding the trauma suffered by victims of sexual, psychological and physical abuse over recent decades, very many people directly or indirectly affected have turned their backs on the Roman Catholic Church. Although the reasons for abandoning the Church and its sacraments are many and complex, the prevalence not only of abuse but also of the woefully inadequate - and at times mendacious - response of senior prelates has been a major factor in accelerating the decline in religious observance.

I know people who have been deeply traumatised and for whom the very sight of a religious habit or symbol evokes anger, fear and revulsion. Catholics do well not to underestimate this reality. It is true that media coverage has not always been fair and that the impressions left on the wider population are sometimes misleading. Nevertheless, the suffering of victims and the failures of Church leadership have left deep wounds.

Amid this maelstrom of grief, anger and disillusionment, some have asked: "How can a Mass celebrated by an evil priest ever be valid?" Or, "How can defiled hands consecrate the Body of Christ?"

Grandparents: sowing the seeds of a eucharistic faith

Today is the World Day for Grandparents and the elderly.  Realistically, being a senior and a grandparent often go together! One of the great blessings of being a grandparent is the freedom to welcome the little children as Jesus did and then return them to their parents!

According to a number of sources including this one, Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader, was baptised due to the influence and encouragement of his grandmother in the decade of the Stalinist terror of the 1930s. The Christian faith survived in Russia and other parts of the USSR thanks in no small part to the witness of countless believers, among them many of the babushki – the grandmothers of Russia.  When many churches were closed and public religious practices made difficult if not impossible, family networks kept the faith alive.  Many grandparents encouraged baptisms of their grandchildren and prayed with them.  Their involvement in the lives of their grandchildren helped preserve memories, customs and the rudiments of a living faith.

Adoration at the heart of the city

My home city, Dublin, has been blessed with the presence of the Congregation of the BlessedSacrament since 1970. A modest chapel opened that year on D'Olier Street before moving, in 1995, to Bachelor's Walk, where it remains today.

Many hundreds of people pass through its doors each day - some to pause for a prayer before the exposed Blessed Sacrament, others to attend one of the daily Masses or celebrate the sacrament of reconciliation or, perhaps, seek spiritual help as I did from 1981 for a time. People come from every walk of life, representing a wide range of ages, backgrounds and circumstances. The visible signs of homelessness, addiction and mental health struggles that mark the streets of the city are not absent from this oasis of peace. Equally noticeable is the growing number of visitors from other continents, many of whom appear younger than those typically found in many parish congregations.

Discerning God's prompting in our hearts

Sunday 26 July 2026

Lectio Divina:*

1 Kings 3:5-12 Psalm 119(118)

Romans 8:28-30 Matthew 13:44-52

Meditatio:

‘Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?’’  (1 Kings 3:9)

Commentary:

The gift of discernment is something we treasure especially as we learn, hopefully, from successes and mistakes in the course of one’s life.  In the first reading, we hear that God was pleased with his servant, Solomon, ‘because you … have not asked for yourself long life or riches’ but had asked for ‘understanding to discern what is right’. Listening to a moving and inspiring introductory speech by newly appointed Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, on the outside 10 Downing Street the other day prompted me to think about the role of political leadership especially at this time when all that we had taken for granted – democracy, human rights, freedom of the press, rule of law, international solidarity and peace – seem to be very much under attack.

The grain of wheat: the martyrdom of St Oscar Romero

About Romero –
The Archbishop Romero Trust

Central America has been a particularly troubled part of the globe over the decades; it has been the crossroads of competing political ideologies and economic interests. The Roman Catholic Church continues to play an important role, there as well as elsewhere, in speaking out for the poor and the  marginalised.  On 24 March,1980, Archbishop Oscar Romero was shot dead while celebrating Mass in the chapel of Divine Providence Hospital in El Salvador.

He died at the altar while offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, uniting his life to the sacrifice of Christ.  His crime was that he had spoken out courageously and continually against injustice and State terror. He had called on members of the security forces not to obey immoral orders to kill. 

A holy priest who had earned a reputation as a somewhat quiet and conservative man dedicated to piety moved into a troubled place when he had been appointed archbishop of El Salvador in 1977. As the Vaticannews site says:

Mind your language

Source: here

Some years ago I was buying provisions in a shop in the West Cork Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking area).  I spoke in Irish with the shop keeper. For some reason I burst out in tears afterwards. The conversation had triggered a strong emotion. You see, my late father used to speak to me, on occasions, in Irish using his ‘Muscaraí’ dialect of Irish as spoken today by a small number of people in West Cork. He was not a native speaker and I was not brought up through Irish. However, the inflections, cadences, rhythm and turn of phrase was, for me, like walking back in time.  It was a delightful experience even if tinged by sadness at my loss.

Language is a strange thing. People go to war over language; it  touches on identity, connection, meaning and continuity.  In the Church some people go to war over language in the liturgy…

Latin is the ‘official’ language of the Roman Catholic Church.  For over 1,500 years it was the only or main language used in the Roman rites of the Western Church.  I heard Mass only in Latin for the first 10 years or so of my own life before the ‘vernacular’ became the norm in the mid- to late-1960s following the reforms ushered in by Vatican II.

A common misconception, nowadays, is that Vatican II ‘abolished’ the Latin Mass.  Vatican II had relatively little to say about the language of the Liturgy. In Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963) it did confirm that:

More than words

A prayer meeting organized by the Taizé community.
Credit: Christian Pulfrich, CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED, Wikimedia 

As human beings, we are sentient creatures with the capacity to taste, hear, see, touch, and smell. God speaks to all our senses, not merely to our intellects or inner hearts. When we receive and taste what appears to be bread and wine in the Eucharist, we participate in something sacred and real. When we hear the Word of God proclaimed, we are listening to words of both divine and human authorship. Saint Paul reminds us that ‘faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ’ (Romans 10:17). When we see beautiful works of art in a church, we are often moved to awe, praise and thanksgiving.