Catholics for a Changing Church

(This is the editorial for the forthcoming edition of Renew)

"Wherever one puts a finger, pus oozes out". Manuel Gonzalez Prada

Manuel Gonzalez Prada was a Peruvian Creole aristocrat, of Anarchist convictions, and an acerbic critic of his late nineteenth century society. He wrote elsewhere of the unholy trinity of judge, police prefect and priest who preyed upon the poor. Gonzalez Prada loved his people but despaired of the society and the mores by which his people lived.

Adrian B Smith MAfr was a good friend to many people and a valued supporter of CCC.   We honour him by giving here the tribute made to him by Patrick Shanahan at his Farewell Eucharist.

The Quiet Rebel

I want to use a startling and profound quote, from T.S ELIOT:

‘To rejoice and mourn at once and for the same reason’.

Think again. Rejoicing and mourning at once. If our liturgy for Christian death and final farewell was a morbid affair then there would be no chance of using ‘rejoice and mourn’. But our liturgy this noontime is truly human – truly magnificent a piece of traditional style that captures all generations.

Phil Kingston invites to to read 'Life in Just Peace': A proposal for a radically different capitalism put forward by a European Network of Christian Organisations, including Pax Christi Germany. It will be considered at a World Council of Churches meeting in Kingston, Jamaica in May 2011. The five-page Declaration is followed by seventeen pages of the reasons for writing it.

She served in church as a child, has been excommunicated, is married to a divorced man, and has been consecrated a bishop. How much further can a Catholic woman challenge the Vatican? Peter Stanford meets Christine Mayr-Lumetzberger

Read the article in the Independent on Sunday