Sunday May 20th 2012 – The Feast of the Ascension of the Lord

 

Sunday May 20^th 2012    The Feast of the Ascension of the Lord    Seventh Week of Easter

 

 

Mass Intentions for the coming week:

Saturday – 6.30 – Jack Leisk

Sunday – 10.00 – Alfred Ramsden (Birth/Anniv)

Monday – 9.00 – Mary Benson (A)

Tuesday – 7.00 – Bill Woods (40^th A)

Wednesday – 9.00 – Gladys Brennan (35^th A)

Thursday – 9.00 – Betty Bycroft (B)

Friday – 9.00 – Betty Carvlin (A)

Saturday – 9.00 – The Parish

Saturday – 6.30 – Parishioners’ Intentions from the Avery Family

Pentecost Sunday – 10.00 – Vi Smith

 

Bits ‘ and Bobs: Joan Williams is now recuperating after her recent knee operation in The Manor House, Little Weighton and I’m sure that she would welcome visitors. It shouldn’t be too long before she is back at home (and awaiting the second knee job!). Mary Wood, Martin, Anthony and Fr John’s Mum, celebrates her 90^th. birthday this coming Thursday. She is a resident at St Catherine’s on Southcoates Lane. Many thanks for your generosity to last week’s Appeal by Sister Anne. You donated £705.20. I think she enjoyed the ‘different’ ways we do things here. I managed to get ‘rid’ of her before watching the ‘big game’. I read that the City manager Mancini and two of his players went to 7.30 am Mass last Sunday. God obviously listened to their prayers instead of mine! Can I also thank Jim Norton for taking Sr Anne to lunch, as I had three christenings after Mass. They were, Lenny Ray Adamson, son of Jack and Linda, Sadie Laigh Longley, daughter of Michael and Zoe, and Harvey James Leach, son of Craig and Stephanie. All three babies were related! Many thanks to those of you who ventured into The Garden Room after Mass last Sunday to support the Youth SVP Initiative encouraged by our own parish SVP Conference. We were spoiled with lovely cakes and home-made biscuits. We had a donation of £100 from Betty’s sister May and her husband Al from Williamsburg USA, towards the Teenage Cancer Unit at Castle Hill, one of the charities Gerry wanted supporting after his death. Young Gabriel celebrated his 8^th birthday last week with a party at Rock City. Glad I wasn’t invited (it’s a climbing centre!). And Hazel Corcoran celebrated her 65^th birthday on Wednesday. I’m sure she didn’t go rock climbing. Please keep in your prayers all our young people who are in the middle of their exams at the moment. They’ve had RE, French, History and Food during the week and lots more to face!

 

Endsleigh Holy Child School is looking for a Midday Supervisory Assistant, hours 12.00 – 1.10 pm, Monday to Friday (term time). Permanent contract, required for May 2012 (or as soon as possible thereafter). The deadline is noon tomorrow, Monday. Contact the school on 853203.

 

Pat Doyle from St. Charles’ Drop-in Centre writes: ‘Dear Fr. Pat and parishioners, many thanks for the kind gift you recently made of £379.12p. Numbers remain high, though they fluctuate. The last few session’s attendance were, 72, 64, 65, 49 and 53. There is a significant number of migrants, mainly Poles. On Tuesday there were at least 12.’

 

Recently Pope Benedict celebrated the seventh anniversary of his election. The scenes in St Peter’s Square that afternoon illustrated what this divisive figure has meant for his church. Middle-aged and older people were crestfallen. A man sat at one of the great fountains in the square and wept openly. Around him danced seminarians from the North American College. Well-scrubbed and in cassocks, they could not contain their glee. “Benedicto, Benedicto,” they shouted. “It’s a regular party,” a seminarian from Pittsburg told this reporter. For them, the election of John Paul’s enforcer as Pope represented the final defeat of that liberal Catholicism ushered in following Vatican II which they and their mentors see as the root of all that is wrong in the church today. The rigid certainties enforced by the new pope had so much more appeal for them than the porous inclusive Catholicism of the previous generation. Pope Benedict’s views were well-known, as were his attitudes to dissent. As prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger helped to force closed many windows thrown open by Pope John XXIII and Vatican II. For instance, where ecumenism was concerned and in his infamous Dominus Iesus document of 2000, he dismissed all reformed churches as not churches “in the proper sense”. They were merely “ecclesial communities”. All other faiths were “gravely deficient”. In 1997, he described Buddhism as an “auto-erotic spirituality”. Hinduism was based on a concept of reincarnation resembling “a continuous circle of hell”. On celibacy, women priests or women in the diaconate, he was immovable. Similarly on the use of condoms even to combat Aids. On homosexuality he was virulent. In 1986, he described it as a “strong tendency ordered towards an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder”. Where dissent was concerned he brooked no hostages. It extended to former colleagues such as Hans Kung. In 1966, at Kung’s instigation, the Catholic faculty at Germany’s Tubingen university appointed Fr Ratzinger professor of dogmatics. In 1979, Kung was stripped of his licence to teach because he challenged papal infallibility. In 1981, when Ratzinger became dean of the CDF, he upheld that decision. In 1986, he stopped US priest Fr Charles Curran from teaching because of his views on sexuality and ethics. A Brazilian, Fr Leonardo Boff, was silenced twice by him, in 1985 and in 1991. Fr Robert Nugent and Sister Jeannine Gramick, who worked with gay people in the US, were sanctioned in 1999. In 1995, Sri Lankan theologian Fr Tissa Belasuriya was excommunicated by him over writings on Mary, original sin and the divinity of Christ. He was later reconciled with the church. There were so many more. There is also something deeply insidious about the methods he and Rome use to silence those who disagree, as we have seen in Ireland. You might say Rome has ways of making you  “think with the mind of the church” (sentire com ecclesia), in that memorable phrase directed by Rome at Fr Tony Flannery  last month as he was told “… to a monastery go!” The Irish Times has, for instance, been aware for years of the curt silencing of three other  Irish priests/theologians as they sought their way to a more compassionate, Christian understanding of human life. All three belong to different religious congregations. In all instances, the head of their congregation was summoned to the CDF in Rome after anonymous complaint. The congregation head was advised to bring the “dissident” into line. He in turn contacted the congregation head in Ireland. The “dissident” was summoned and confronted with his aberration. Usually, at local level, the relevant head has been kind. The priest/theologian in each case has been torn between the need to articulate his convictions for the benefit of the distressed and the consequences for his congregation. Each priest felt he had to accept silence. In each case too, those of us in the media aware of it were asked not to write about this lest the sky fall and bring further misery on the already crushed. So Rome has had its way and through exploiting finer human emotions such as loyalty and respect. Clever? Yes, but hardly Christian. [Patsy McGarry, Religious Affairs Correspondent, The Irish Times]

 

St Mary’s College recent Awards Evening: The presentation of awards was by Andrew Smaje, Chief Executive of Hull Truck Theatre who congratulated the College on being chosen by the Royal Shakespeare Company as one of the only six schools in the country to work closely with it over the next few years! Among those awarded prizes for their performance during the year were some of our own! Ryan Burnett Yr 7 for Dance. Philip Croft Yr 8 for Trampolining. Sean O’ Brien Yr 8 for RE. Charlie Layton Yr 9 for Service to Others. Bethany Sciberras Yr 11 for Commitment and Effort. Anna Holgate Yr 13 for Performing Arts. Henry Green Yr 13 for Service to Others in Lourdes and Jonathan Croft Yr 13 for Excellence in Law. Jonathan was awarded a Hull Law School Sponsorship, awarded by the Law Dept. of the University of Hull to the student who has made the most valuable contribution in A level Law. Congratulations!

 

Please remember the sick in your prayers this week: Basil Berry, Sheila Johnson, Bridget Woods, Brian Anderson, Shirley Manuel, Mary Waller, Joan Williams, Gabrielle Vanderstock, Tony Tordoff, Mike Avery, Win Murphy,  Nick Norton, Kathleen and Arthur, Joan and Peter Watts, Peter Dyas, Margaret Price, Tony and Shirley Woods-McConville, Peter Fowlston, Agnes Pidd, Nora and Peter Orvis, Les Ulyatt, David Langley, Tom Amos and Mike Shakesby.

 

Mike Avery would like to thank everyone for all their concern, prayers and cards after his recent operation. It was great to see him at Mass on Tuesday night, although I think it was to gloat over Man City’s winning of the Premiership. Better than any doctor or medicine! His recovery is ongoing at a slow but steady pace. It may take a little time but every week things are improving. He has asked that Mass be offered for all your intentions.

 

Fr Joseph O’Hanlon (Nottingham) asks this question: “How come I know the names and career details of every man involved in the Hampton Court conference of 1604 who went on to produce in 1611 the King James Bible? I can go online and find out the translators of every English bible since then. Yet the guys who produced the new translation are sworn to secrecy before they start. A Bertie Wooster might have said of Roman officials, ‘The KGB could have taken their correspondence course’. I think they did.”

 

Diamond Jubilee Lunch – Sunday June 3^rd. in The Rectory Garden at St Mary’s, hosted by Ruth and Fr Paul. It starts at noon and you are asked to bring along food to share. Patriotic Dress is optional! Telephone Ruth on 847668 for more details. I’d be there except for the fact that I’ll be in Lourdes over that weekend with the youngsters.

 

Anniversaries this coming week: Saturday – Isabel Fletcher. Monday – William Henry Wood, Mary Benson and John Callaghan. Tuesday – Thomas Gilson, Gladys Brennan and Paul Gibson. Wednesday – Barry Britton and Estrella Banjamin. Thursday – Winifred Richardson. Friday – Mary Doherty, Joseph Burns, Betty Carvlin and George Watson. Sunday – Gertrude Culkin, Jennie Gallagher, George Porter and Sydney Waterhouse.

 

Finally, a true story from the Manchester Evening News: A passenger in a taxi heading for Salford station leaned over

to ask the driver a question and gently tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention. The driver screamed, lost control of the cab, nearly hit a bus and stopped inches from a large plate glass window.  The shaking driver said “Are you OK? I’m so sorry but you scared me stiff.”  The frightened passenger apologised and said “I didn’t realise that a mere tap on the shoulder would startle someone so badly.”  The driver replied “No, no, I’m the one who should apologise; it’s entirely my fault.  Today is my very first day driving a cab.  I’ve been driving a hearse for 25 years!”

 

Items to me for next weekend by Thursday, please   john@mcnicholas.karoo.co.uk   876812