Pope Francis has issued his much awaited response following the Synod on the Amazon. In his document ‘Beloved Amazon’ Francis calls for greater lay participation in the church and says the training of priests in the Amazon must be changed so they are better able to minister to indigenous peoples. “Every effort should be made” to give the faithful access to the Eucharist.
He also writes “This urgent need leads me to urge all bishops, especially those in Latin America, not only to promote prayer for priestly vocations, but also to be more generous in encouraging those who display a missionary vocation to opt for the Amazon region”
He does not deal specifically with the issues of the ordination of women as deacons or married men as priests.

Our thanks to We Are Church and Colm Holmes for the link to Roy Donovan's talk "What does it mean to be Catholic today?"

Stan Mellett, a Redemptorist with over 60 years priestly experience, gives his thoughts on the future of ministry.
"... the point of departure is the sacrament of baptism. Everyone is priest, prophet and king; each one with different roles and gifts serves the whole People of God. Like Jesus who came not to be served but to serve and give His life for many.
The ordained minister for today and tomorrow will need to have a mind set and attitudes whereby he/she is like the rest of men and women – not a person apart! Deeply prayerful with ‘the bible in one hand and the daily paper in the other’ at the service of all life and all creation!"

Concerns expressed in a recent article by Brendan Hoban, ‘the world has changed and so must the Church’, were the subject of a fairly lengthy interview with Bishop Fintan Monahan of Killaloe Diocese on the Faith Alive programme on Mid West Radio.

Eir will be introducing a charge of €5.99 per month to avail of the email service eircom.net

Many priests and parishes who still use eircom.net as an email address will need to move to another provider or face high charges for an email service that is available free elsewhere.

We Are Church Ireland Event with Roy Donovan
10 February
Mercy Centre International, 64a Lower Baggot Street, Dublin 2.

Seamus Ahearne is reflecting on life as it goes on all about us. "To look around is essential. To see. The birds. The buds. The wind. The hills. The air.  The underground. The people. Gratitude. Appreciation. God-moments and Good-moments. Our attention has to be on what we have and what we have been given."

Writing in America Magazine James Martin, S.J. gives a rationale for his pro-life outlook. "And I would invite you to consider this more as a profession of faith than as a political argument.
The best way of explaining my belief is this: The longer I live, the more I grow in awe of God’s creative activity and in reverence for God’s creation."

75 years ago, on 27 January 1945, the Soviet Red Army arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The world was soon to learn the full extent of the true horror of Nazi Fascism.
Chris McDonnell, writing in the Catholic Times, remembers: "All too easily we play with words to justify events, tell stories where truth is the casualty leading only to a greater misfortune. Maybe we should pause awhile as the month-end days arrive to ask a question and seek forgiveness."

Brendan Hoban, writing in the Western People, again comments on the decreasing numbers of priests to serve in Ireland and the consequences that arise as a result for the remaining, mainly elderly, priests.
But he adds "my interest here is not in the priesthood issue.
Rather it’s on how the failure to address this issue by the leadership of our Church is impinging on the immediate victims (the present priests) caught in the slipstream of an on-going decision by the Irish bishops to continue to avoid ‘the elephant in the living room’.
"Are there not a few bishops who might do a Bishop Kräutler on it and have a chat with Pope Francis about the implications of his Christmas message – ‘the world has changed and so must the Church’?
What is it about that sentence that the Irish bishops don’t understand or refuse to accept, even though almost every Catholic in Ireland seems happy to acknowledge?"