MORE ON THAT WOMAN IN THE PULPIT AT ST BRIGID'S

I have been trying to find out why, once again, a priest is available to celebrate a Sunday Mass in Dannevirke, but there is no priest available for the same day Sunday Mass in Pahiatua. 

This plaintive cry came last week from Bob Gill of St Joseph's Dannevirke, who adds:

A Liturgy of the Word, though, is scheduled for Pahiatua. After reading the comments generated from your headline A WOMAN IN THE PULPIT AT ST BRIGID'S, you can imagine what thoughts are now running through my head!

I say:

A Dannevirke parishioner called on the services of Fr James Lyons, a Dannevirke 'old boy', who is obliging. 

We must assume that no one in Pahiatua has a priest up their sleeve - or perhaps because Ashhurst is relatively close, St Brigid's parishioners hope those who can drive and can afford it, will go to the Traditional Latin Mass at Ashhurst? 

As we all know, God draws good out of evil.

Bob (who is persistent sort of chap) then adds:

It’s a poor do when a Dannevirke parishioner has to arrange their Sunday Mass! A retired priest has opted to respond to a parishioner request for Dannevirke; good on him, but where is Bishop Drennan involved in this scheduling of priests in his diocese? 

Surely the Bishop should be looking at all ways of ensuring the celebration of Sunday Mass in his churches – which he obviously isn’t.

Donna Te Amo says: 

He (+Drennan) is on stress leave … so cut the bishop a break.

Caroline Waite says:

He isn't well. Perhaps time to ease off.

Philippa O'Neill says:

Time to get these priests back from Aussie then … we need them … even if they are the more traditional type. I do pray he is better soon.

Bob Gill the terrier says:

Traditional type? Surely that is preferable in the long term scheme of things in New Zealand, seeing the indication in other places tells us that's what we should be doing.

I say:

Thank you, Donna (who understandably as a parish  secretary, in spite of the oft-quoted, much-to-be-desired principle of transparency is privy to information which would often assist the prayer ministry) for telling us that +Charles is on stress leave. 

It might be unpardonable in the Church of Nice, but at the risk of sounding like a hard-hearted Hannah I have to say that in the army, +Charles' state of stress might be classified as self-inflicted injury. Something like shooting yourself in the foot, which desperate soldiers did in WW I to avoid service in the trenches.

Some of us saw this situation heading for the PN Diocese like an express train when that fine, beautiful priest Fr Bryan Buenger shook the dust of the diocese off his shoes because he "did not have the support of his bishop".

God will not be mocked. He sent Fr Bryan as a faithful shepherd to this diocese and some people, like "the vociferous baby-boomers of St Brigid's" referred to by Sharon Crooks, repudiated him. It was only a matter of time (a very short time, as it happened) before some essential lynchpin, like the Vicar-General Monsignor Brian Walsh, would be struck down by grave illness, another priest fall victim again to depression (how predictable!) and the Bishop himself take time off for 'stress'. 

"Oh, how Old Testament!" I hear you cry; "How pre-Vatican II! God doesn't smite people now!" 

That, tragically, is the kind of modernist mayhem inflicted on Catholic school girls who've been given no reason to believe sex outside marriage isn't fine and tell their mothers so, and go on the pill. I'd like to see our priests coping with the fallout from their modernist 'preaching' that mothers have to deal with. Mothers who can't take leave from motherhood for stress.

God does not change. But that's not a tenet of the 'theology' we're taught in 'homilies' now - and apparently in some parishes not for the past thirty years. Otherwise how could a convert go right through RCIA and endure another twenty-five years of pew-sitting before realizing her inherited Protestant belief, that by baptism we are all saved and can't merit heaven, is heresy?

What the good bishop desperately needs isn't "a break", or "easing off", it's prayer. Same for all our priests, no exception, before those who aren't on stress leave yet, will be. 

Was any really meaningful, efficacious prayer asked for in relation to Fr Brian? Were parish groups organized for praying the Rosary and Adoration, for his healing? 

Tomorrow David Seymour's pernicious, horrible Bill for assisted suicide goes to the vote in Parliament. In what parishes in the diocese, on the Feast of Corpus Christi last Sunday*, were we asked or encouraged to pray to our Eucharistic Lord and our Blessed Mother for our beautiful nation, once truly 'Godzone', to avert the twin evils of euthanasia and abortion up to birth (the inevitable outcome of Jacinda We are One Ardern's policy baby) of further liberalization?

Could we all please WAKE UP? Unless we realise what's going on and start praying seriously, the diocese and the NZ Church in general may share the fate of the Gadarene swine who possessed by demons "whose name is legion" headed for the cliff and jumped into the sea.

Demons still exist, and their angelic intelligence utterly outwits us. Bishop Charles has stated that he finds the concept of spiritual warfare distasteful, but it's always been part of human history, and it is to our detriment if we minimize or ignore such a reality. 

St. Paul warns of this in Ephesians 6:11-12: 

Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

The Mass last Sunday - Corpus Christi, the Body and Blood of Christ - was, according to Bob Gill, "the most enjoyable Mass I've been to at St Joseph's (Dannevirke) since Father Bryan left us. 

I have never met the celebrant, Father Mike Wooller SM, before. Apparently the church had him once before when I was recently overseas. He gave an inspiring homily on the precious gift of the Eucharist which had everyone I could see listening so attentively. 

It was a Maori Mass, but with a mainly Pakeha congregation he took time out occasionally to digress into English explanations. He speaks and preaches so convincingly. 

But no, I found out later, Fr Wooller is not from the Palmerston North Diocese! He is a Marist and I am hoping we can get him here as celebrant on other occasions.