Seamus Ahearne writes about the necessity of the ACP.
"I think the ACP exists not just to make noise or to be prophetic but to add ballast and communion to the collective in ministry. We are at breaking point as priests. We will fall apart if we stay apart."
" the ACP is to reach out and call attention to the tiredness and to the ageing of the diocesan priests. What is the support structure for them? Creating clusters and adding on more work to do cannot be the answer. Creative and imaginative ideas are necessary (as Francis said). We cannot go on as we are."
"The ACP isn’t just a vehicle for the journalists to use or an association of renegades. The ACP cannot be about the big noisy issues – nor can we forever be fighting big causes. It is the essentials of faith that are our interests and the ordinary issues of day to day life."

Updated to include a translation of Pope Francis' address. Translation kindly provided by Pádraig McCarthy. Translations of the Popes addresses are very slow to appear in Rome so our thanks to Pádraig.

Joshua J. McElwee reports in NCR on a speech by Pope Francis to a national conference of the Italian church in Florence.
Pope Francis made a fairly strong statement that the Church must continue to face problems of the present in new and culturally relevant ways.
“Before the problems of the church it is not useful to search for solutions in conservatism or fundamentalism, in the restoration of obsolete conduct and forms that no longer have the capacity of being significant culturally,”
“Christian doctrine is not a closed system incapable of generating questions, doubts, interrogatives — but is alive, knows being unsettled, enlivened,” said the pope. “It has a face that is not rigid, it has a body that moves and grows, it has a soft flesh: it is called Jesus Christ.”

As we move into the darker times of the year, the readings at Mass remind us more and more of the end of time, and the glory awaiting believers. We trust that God stays with us always.

(Saint Martin of Tours, see below)

1st Reading: Wisdom 6:1-11

God, as Creator of everything, provides for all alike

Listen therefore, O kings, and understand; learn, O judges of the ends of the earth.

Give ear, you that rule over …