Martin made the comment after attending Ireland's national pre-synodal assembly this week.

"The question is — what next?

"We are still not entirely certain, but we are open to what the Holy Spirit might be saying and to a quiet and gentle renewal of the faith. We are moving from maintenance to mission.

"In order to make space for something new, we have to accept that there is no point in trying to maintain a particular form of the life of the Church which was for a different time."

The facts are clear. In 2016, people identifying as Catholic in Ireland made up 78.3 percent of the population (approximately 3.7 million people), down from 84.2 percent in the 2011 census. It's predicted the 2022 census will show a further decline.

Ireland also has an ageing clergy and few vocations to the diocesan priesthood or religious life.

Martin noted the past year's synodal conversation with people all over Ireland culminated in the assembly, which was a moment to hear the fruits of that conversation.

"One of the things that is coming across is the (pre-)synodal conversations - an awful lot of people are very passionate about their faith in Jesus Christ ... with the Church. But they want the church to be open to something different," he says.

There are some big barriers to renewal though.

Feedback to the assembly revealed "a despair among a lot of our young people, a lack of hope, and a lack of a sense of purpose" and at the same time "a belief in faith, in hope and in love". This is "what we are trying to rekindle in the life of the Church," Martin says.

His confrere, Archbishop Dermot Farrell, says clerical sexual abuse had irreparably damaged the church's reputation in Ireland. This could spell the end for Catholicism in Ireland if major changes were not implemented within the church, he warned.

He said evidence of Christian belief in Ireland today "has, for all intents and purposes, vanished" and this "underlying crisis of faith was particularly acute among the younger generations". He added, "The current model of the church is unsustainable".

Martin has a more hopeful view.

"We are moving into a new period of evangelisation, recognising that many people - even those who have been baptised in the faith - perhaps don't have a personal relationship with Jesus, don't have a personal sense of God, and indeed maybe don't have a sense of direction in their lives," he says.

"We are trying to find new ways of communicating the joy of the Gospel, which is very much a theme that Pope Francis has been revealing to the Church during his pontificate."

He stresses the importance of reaching out to young people who "are living in a very different space," suggesting the Church play an important pastoral role among an increasingly disaffected youth.

Source

• The Tablet
• Catholic News Service

"I wondered if I had made a mistake," he said recently.

After 25 years spent mostly in education and church administration, Chatman had decided to try his hand at being a local church pastor.

He had walked away from a prestigious and comfortable position as the director of youth ministries in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's Chicago headquarters to take over a struggling church in a distressed neighborhood in Minneapolis.

Many years earlier, he had served briefly as an associate pastor in Oregon, but this time he was heading his own church.

And it was not an auspicious beginning.

On his way into the building that morning, he couldn't pretend that he hadn't seen the drug dealers doing business on the corner across the street.

"I said to myself, ‘What am I doing here at this stage of my career?'".

"I wasn't even sure how long they would be able to keep paying my salary."

Soon, Chatman changed his perspective.

"I decided that the congregation wasn't the 35 people sitting in the pews," he said.

"The congregation was the 4,000 people who lived in the neighborhood.

Once I reframed it like that, it helped me see that the church needed to be a physical presence on the street."

And what a presence it has become. Redeemer, through its nonprofit community development organization, Redeemer Center for Life, literally owns, if not the street, the entire block the church sits on — and more.

More importantly, it has had an extraordinary impact on the lives of people in the Harrison neighborhood of North Minneapolis, a racially diverse, mostly low-income area near the city's downtown.

A beacon of hope

"We have been able to change the narrative about North Minneapolis within the church, the neighborhood and the larger community," Chatman said.

As the church's website declares, Redeemer is "a beacon of hope in the Harrison neighborhood of North Minneapolis."

Over the years, Redeemer and the Redeemer Center for Life have launched a

• cafe,
• bike repair
• coffee shop,
• 16-unit apartment building,
• another seven apartments over the cafe,
• home that houses Lutheran Volunteer Corps members,
• storefront that has been converted into the Living Room,
• gathering space for everything from health clinics to civic meetings.

The church also has built two single-family homes that were sold as part of an effort to support affordable housing.

"Between Redeemer Church and Redeemer Center for Life, we're responsible for more than $1 million in economic activity in this neighborhood annually," he said.

As for the church itself, worship is livelier and more crowded than it was on Chatman's first Sunday, but the neighborhood continues to be Redeemer's primary focus.

About 90 people now attend Sunday services, and 250 are listed on the church's membership rolls, but Chatman still insists that the congregation is more than just the Sunday faithful.

"There are people in this neighborhood who call this their church who have never been inside the building," he said. Continue reading

• Image: Redeemer Church Advent Newsletter

He said he really wanted everyone's thoughts and feedback on the issues, and in some cases, for churches to come up with constructive ideas which could provide input to the Council, maybe even with joint projects.

"I really see the churches being significantly involved in housing, as it is well into helping in education. I want churches to assist our young people to improve…we saw what happened in London with the riots," he pointed out.

He said there were about 200 different ethnic groups in Auckland City, and churches and schools were particularly significant places in helping bring about multi-cultural understanding and harmony.

Source

• Challenge Weekly
• Image: Conger

"I long to see a church that rises above its sin, brokenness and self-centeredness for the sake of Jesus and all those He longs to reach. I long to see a church where hundreds of thousands of unbelievers respond to Jesus and have their lives restored by Him. I long to see a church that embraces all people: the rich, the poor, the prosperous, the marginalised, the young, the old, babies and teenagers, the married, the single, the divorced, the remarried, the employed, the unemployed, the Pakeha, the Maori, the Asian, the sober, the addicted, the housed, the homeless, the articulate and the uneducated."

Read Mike Norris's Address

Mike Norris - Vicar

"Rather to my surprise I came to faith in my early twenties whilst working as a corporate lawyer. I ended up helping out at St Mary's in London and from there, came out to Auckland in 2004. I love New Zealand: great people, great beaches, great food, great coffee, great country! I love surfing and ocean swimming (both done embarrassingly badly)."

The Pasifika Church Disability Toolkit is a resource which provides nourishment to the roots of the tree by broadening the awareness and understanding of disability issues within Pacific church communities.

The Disability ToolkIt provides Pacific churches with

• Information on how to best communicate with Pacific disabled peoples in their church community in order to include Pacific disabled peoples in church services, events and activities.
• Information on disability support services for Pacific church people to use and access.
• Helpful and practical suggestions on how church parishioners can positively respond to the needs of Pacific disabled peoples in their communities.

Source
Pacific Scoop

Photo Credit
Pacific Scoop

"The government is struggling to repatriate thousands of migrant workers and we can't help them directly. With the assistance of the Vatican embassy in Dhaka, we asked the Libyan Church via the Italian bishops' conference to shelter Bangladeshis," Episcopal Commission for Justice and Peace chairman Bishop Gervas Rozario of Rajshahi, said yesterday.

"Since our appeal, several churches in Libya are currently sheltering many Bangladeshi migrants. Now there's nothing else we can do from but help support the government which is under huge pressure," the bishop said.

Reports say there are around 89,000 Bangladeshi migrant workers still in Libya where protesters are embroiled in a bloody conflict to oust long-term dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

About 5,500 workers have returned home so far and at least five were killed.

For the Bangladesh government it's a gigantic task and the Labour Ministry has expressed regret it can only bring back around 25,000 with help from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

There are several hundred Christian migrant workers in Libya. A few of them have already got home safely.

"Returning home means landing in heaven from hell for me. I've left everything in Libya, but I'm happy to get home in one piece," said Sentu Richard Gomes, 27, a Catholic from Deogaon near Dhaka, who returned home three days ago.

"In Libya around 100 rebels attacked us, stole everything we had and torched the building we were hiding in. We had no choice but to flee. I fled to Egypt, starved for days and then came back to Bangladesh with help from the IOM."

Thousands of migrant workers from other Asian countries are still waiting to come home.

Source:
ucanews.com
Photo: Daily Mail