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The feast of that most celebrated of parish priests, St John Mary Vianney, Cure of Ars (inimitable in the Church of Nice), seems a good day to compare the awful layout at Our Lady of Lourdes Palmerston North and the cathedral of the Holy Spirit (see my earlier post, below), with St Joseph's, Dannevirke. Comparisons they say, are odious - but this one's so favorable, it just has to be charitable.
Fr Bryan Buenger of St Joseph's Church Dannevirke, Tararua Parish priest, came to New Zealand seeking ordination to the priesthood. The Church in the US, his own country, had turned him away as 'too old'.
He doesn't look old to me. And St Joseph's Church in Dannevirke in Tararua, where I go to pray on the way home from meetings in Palmerston North, is a blessed relief after the aforementioned churches there.
Entering St Joseph's, the tabernacle is right there, where it should be: centre-rear, beyond the altar, in a space that till very recently was obviously for private prayer, with a couple of upholstered pews placed so you could pray without being seen from the nave. (This week it was filled with pews, maybe for the school children at weekday Masses - but there wasn't enough space left in front of the tabernacle to celebrate Mass. Hmmm.)
The tabernacle is covered, as it should be, the church is immaculately appointed and maintained and so are the grounds. On one of my earlier visits, people had come in to the church to pray. Silently. By the time I left, 20 parishioners had gathered with Fr Bryan for an evening Mass, silently (and smilingly). I had to leave - I'd been to Mass at the cathedral, and I didn't want to be late for dinner. ('Im indoors is now the cook, and you don't upset the cook.)
But some months before that, I'd stayed on for Mass, and been very impressed by Fr Bryan's care and reverence in celebrating the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Unlike at least another two priests of the PN Diocese, he does not take a break from the sacred texts during the Mass to pass jocular remarks.
I'm reliably informed that the parishoners of St Brigid's, Pahiatua ,which is also in Tararua, are extremely happy with Fr Bryan, and are looking at St Joseph's as a model for re-ordering their church.
But last night I heard from another source that Fr Bryan is leaving. WHAT???
He's returning to the States, where now that he's been trained and ordained and proven in New Zealand, they're happy to have him. Fr Bryan's visitor's visa has run out, but in a letter informing his Tararua parishioners, Fr Bryan reportedly adds that "there are other significant considerations that are involved in my decision."
Meanwhile, is his letter to the same parishioners Bishop Charles Drennan has (reportedly) said the diocese is happy to apply for an extension to his visa, but that Fr Bryan doesn't want it renewed. "The reasons for his departure are varied, wrote Bishop Drennan, even though one or two of them I would not share".
I'll say no more. But if this is distressing for me, as it is, how must the rest of Tararua Parish - St Joseph's, St Brigid's, St Columbkille's Woodville and Sacred Heart, Eketahuna - be feeling?
Does anyone else smell a theological rat?
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My earlier item, posted Tuesday July 31, to which I'd intended to add a paragraph holding up St Joseph's Dannevirke as a model for church interiors but didn't get around to it - until today:
Café Brie, near the Catholic cathedral in Palmerston North, has French pretensions and is a hang-out for cathedral habitues.
Yesterday I was what you might call a 'would-be' cathedral habitue. I couldn't go to Mass there because, astonishingly, at the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit there is NO MASS ON MONDAYS ('Priests' Day Off' syndrome).
But don't get me started. I'm focused on the church of Our Lady of Lourdes in Palmerston North, where I went for a Liturgy of the Word with Holy Communion - although my remarks about OLOL apply almost equally to the cathedral.
Following the service I had lunch (a good club sammie and green tea) with a friend at Café Brie, and told her how forcibly the disordered nature of OLOL's 're-ordering' had struck me that morning.
There we were, half a dozen or so mostly elderly, mostly women, up the front with a man in a bed on wheels at the back, addressing our prayers to an altar, a couple of candlesticks and a bowl of flowers. (There might have been a crucifix; I can't remember.)
Meanwhile, Jesus Christ our Saviour, really and truly Present in the Blessed Sacrament, to whom we were praying, was off-side, over to the left, relegated in His tabernacle to a sort of cubbyhole by the exit.
I said to my friend (who quite saw my point), that if the liturgical mindset that dictated the OLOL lay-out were applied to our animated conversation, we'd not be talking to each other naturally as you do, across the table, but forced to turn side-on to chat to the coffee machine at the counter instead.
I'm reliably informed that the parishioners of Our Lady of Lourdes were extremely upset when the tabernacle, the little palace if you like, or throne room, where the King of Kings resides among us, was removed from its position in the centre of the rear wall behind the altar, and sidelined as it is, right beside a busy thoroughfare through a door to the school playground.
The Instruction on the Worship of the Eucharistic Mystery states that any renovation of older church "should be done with prudence". I'm told the parishioners' protests were aired at a meeting, politely heard (you know how things are done, in the Church of Nice) and then ignored. The 're-ordering' went ahead. Why?
What did it achieve? A shift of focus from the Blessed Sacrament to the priest.
How can a parish priest justify such a move? How could the bishop - at the time, +Peter Cullinane, consent to it? What do priests and bishops pray regularly, in their Divine Office for Pastors?
Never be a dictator over any group that is put in your charge, but be an example that the whole flock can follow (1 Pet 5:3).
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