Posts Tagged ‘The Future’

What would you want to say at the Synod

Monday, September 11th, 2023

Over the past three years, I have been speaking to many groups about the notion of synodality and what it might mean (and not mean) for that community of disciples we refer to as the Catholic Church. In the discussions, one question is invariably put to me, and it amounts to this: If you were Read more

The Sower – channelling the parable

Thursday, July 13th, 2023
The sower

The narrative of the “The Parable of the Sower” draws our attention to the varying types of ground upon which the seed falls. The type of ground prompts introspection: which parts of me are rocky, shallow, or overrun with thorns? However, suddenly, I find myself at the centre of the narrative. I recommend reading verses Read more

The future of ministry: by whom and for whom?

Thursday, June 2nd, 2022
future of ministry

Meet any group of Catholics today and within minutes someone will mention that their diocese or local area is undergoing a “re-organization”. Parishes are being combined, the ordained ministers being spread more thinly around communities, and the access to gathering for Eucharistic activity is being curtailed. The process is sometimes given an elegant name derived Read more

Religion’s search for belonging

Thursday, May 12th, 2022
religion

Among clergy and sociologists, film directors and songwriters it’s become practically a matter of cliché that people are searching for wholehearted belonging and not finding their needs met — the phenomenon, in short, behind the phrase “spiritual but not religious.” These people are setting out on an open-ended quest, on their own or with trusted Read more

We need a new Church museum

Thursday, November 25th, 2021

Pope Francis has warned on many occasions over the past seven years of the danger of the Church being like a museum, full of lovely stuff that’s without any real currency. He phrases it in various ways, but the message is the same. “Keep us from becoming a ‘museum Church,’ beautiful but mute, with much Read more

Covid vaccines alone will not solve human problems

Thursday, October 28th, 2021

While some people bunkered down during the Covid lockdowns, Gerarld Arbuckle wrote a book! The award-winning author’s new book is about the Church in a post-COVID world. In “The Pandemic and the People of God“, internationally renowned theologian and anthropologist and New Zealand-born priest, Gerald Arbuckle SM, weaves together insights from life, anthropology and theology Read more

Forwards to the first century

Monday, August 16th, 2021
synod

One of the first big crises the Church faced was one that Jesus had probably not anticipated. He certainly did not leave any instructions or even advice on how to deal with it. The problem appears in the Acts of the Apostles: “Now during those days, when the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists Read more

The death of trust and the triumph of suspicion

Monday, July 1st, 2019
trust

Without trust, human cooperation is impossible. Without trust, people refuse to cooperate and instead engage in struggles over power because they fear what will happen if their opponents have it. Today, we see this in the highly charged partisan character of American politics and in the Catholic Church, where the hierarchy has lost credibility. A Read more

10 unexpected church trends to surface by 2020

Tuesday, December 20th, 2011

A Church leader once said he didn’t have a vision beyond the next 12 months. His point was that everything changes rapidly, and no one knows the future. So why plan beyond what you do not know for certain? In looking far into the future, he believed leaders wasted too much time on fruitless thinking Read more

Marshall McLuhan: The future of the future is the present

Tuesday, July 19th, 2011

Marshall McLuhan, was a convert to catholicism and described by one of his colleagues as “a mystic Catholic humanist”. And if the man who coined the phrase “the medium is the message” were alive today, there isn’t much that would surprise him — not the Internet, or Google, or Twitter, or WikiLeaks, or even the phone-hacking Read more