Newsletter No. 22. 30/31 May 2015

Most Holy Trinity

St Brigid’s Marrickville In the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney, Australia

One Family, Alive in Christ Est 1886. Under the Pastoral Care of the Passionists since 1887

392 Marrickville Rd (PO Box 237), Marrickville NSW 2204 Tel: 02 8577 5670 Fax: 02 8577 5679

Email: parish@stbrigid.org.au Web: www.stbrigid.org.au

FaceBook: St Brigid’s Marrickville (Now 762 likes)

Parish Priest: Fr John Pearce CP (pp@stbrigid.org.au) Associates: Fr Peter Gardiner CP (peter@stbrigid.org.au)

Fr George Koloth CP (george@stbrigid.org.au) Sr Elena Daton CP (elena@stbrigid.org.au)

Parish Secretary: Ms Terrey Trethowan (9.30am - 4pm)

We stand at the Crossroads of life for many people

Eight Components of a Comprehensive Youth Ministry

Advocacy: Interpreting the needs of young peo-ple and their families, particularly social issues and act-ing with or on behalf of them to improve the situation. Basically, advocacy is giving young people a voice and empowering them to address the social problems or is-sues that they face. Catechesis: Sponsoring young people toward a maturity and understanding of their Catholic Christian faith, fostering a shared identity of Catholic Christians amongst young people while at the same time helping them to develop their own personal faith identity. Community Life: Creating an environment that nurtures meaningful relationships based on those in the gospel between young people and adults. Helping young people feel like a valued part of the Church and provid-ing them with opportunities for participation and social interaction with the wider Church community. Evangelisation: This is proclaiming the good news of the Gospel through work and witness and invit-ing young people to enter into a relationship with Jesus Christ and the wider Church community. Evangelisation is ongoing witness of the Church community as it at-tempts to live out the Gospel. Justice, Peace & Service: Guides young people in the development of a social consciousness and a com-mitment to a life of justice and service grounded in their faith in Jesus Christ. Leadership Development: Recruiting, training and supporting young people and adult leaders in Youth Ministry; empowering young people for leadership and ministry with their peers; developing a leadership team within the Church community; partnering with parents and families in promoting positive youth development and faith growth. Pastoral Care: Promoting positive youth. (Family development through a variety of preventative strate-gies). Caring for young people and their families in crisis through support. Providing guidance for young people as they face life decisions and make moral choices. Prayer and Worship: Assisting young people in further developing their faith life through spiritual devel-opment and personal prayer; providing prayer and wor-ship in a variety of areas to allow young people to expe-rience this; involving young people in the sacramental life of the Church.

Romero devotees say Francis is the pope their hero would have been

By John L. Allen Jr. Crux, 23 May 2015

SAN SALVADOR On Saturday, the late Archbishop Oscar Romero

of El Salvador reached the ranks of the Catholic Church’s near-saints, receiving the title of “blessed” in a ceremony called a beatification.

Theologically, all such declarations may be creat-ed equal, but in terms of star power, some beatifications are clearly more equal than others. Romero, among the most iconic Catholic figures of the late 20th century, is a classic example of the “more equal” category.

Shot to death at the altar in 1980 defending the poor and victims of human rights abuses at the outset of a deadly civil war, Romero became an instant icon, espe-cially to Catholics most invested in the Church’s peace-and-justice teachings.

The beatification was an opportunity to take the temperature of those folks, especially what they made of seeing Romero enter the ranks of officially recognized heroes of the faith.

One constant refrain was the parallels between Romero and Pope Francis, who officially recognized him as a martyr in February.

José Jorge Simán, for in-stance, a Salvadoran business-man, was a close friend of Romero, running San Salvador’s Justice and Peace office and fre-quently hosting him at his home for dinner.

Simán argued that Romero’s evolution from a fairly conventional cleric to a champion of the downtrodden reflected broader shifts in Catholicism, which many believe have reached a crescendo under Pope Francis.

“Under [Pope] Pius XII, the Church was mostly about cat-echism,” he said, referring to the pope who reigned from 1939 to 1958, and during whose term Romero was ordained a priest in 1942.

“Catechism” means a classical form of religious instruction.

“Beginning with the Second Vatican Council, and later with the meetings of Latin American bishops in the 1960s and 70s, the Church began to read the social real-ity and try to change it,” Simán said.

Vatican II was a summit of Catholic bishops in Rome from 1962 to 1965 that launched the Church on a course of modernization and reform, while the celebrated gatherings of Latin American bishops in Medellín, Colom-bia in 1968 and Puebla, Mexico in 1979, embraced the “option for the poor” as a priority.

Simán said it was distressing to see Romero be-come a lightning rod between the political left and right after his death.

“Some wanted to bury him, and others wanted to use him,” Simán said.

The Rev. Gustavo Gutierrez, a Peruvian who’s considered the father of the liberation theology move-ment in Latin American Catholicism that seeks to place the Church on the side of the poor, said one of Romero’s

defining characteristics was a capacity to be open to new ideas.

Gutierrez first met Romero in 1972, when he taught the Salvadoran prelate in a course on liberation theology.

Romero, he said, was “not cloistered or encapsu-lated in one current … he was a traditional person, but in the good sense, not exactly conservative,” he said.

“He’d quote many different theologians, some-thing equally valid for Pope Francis,” Gutierrez said.

A fellow liberation theologian, the Rev. Jon Sorb-ino of El Salvador, went so far as to suggest that the be-atification didn’t represent a real shift in the Vatican, where “they still think what they want to think.”

Instead, Sobrino argued, the tribute to Romero was all about Francis.

“It’s Pope Francis who, being more sensitive, talks more about these things,” he said.

Retired Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, where Salvadorans are the second-largest foreign-born community in the city with roughly 70,000 households, said the beatification represents an “examination of con-science” for the United States.

The United States backed right-wing forces in El Salvador in the 1970s that are widely believed to have been behind the assassination of Romero, and more recently the vicious gangs that plague the country today were forged in the United States and then export-ed back to the country as a result of a 1996 crackdown on immigration. “Our history in El Salvador is best looked at through the eyes of the ‘Joy of the Gospel’,” Mahony said, referring to a 2013 text from Pope Francis that is widely seen as the magna carta of his papacy. “We find there a very concrete path for implementing the gospel today, especially in terms of structures of injustice and oppression,” he said. “It’s the underlying structures that need to be addressed, not just occa-sions here and there of some unjust action.”

Mahony said that when Romero is eventually canonized, the formal declaration of sainthood, it “would just seal that point.”

Many Romero devotees said there’s a straight line connecting the Salvadoran prelate and history’s first Latin American pope, whose core dream is a “poor Church for the poor.”

Sister Elvia Eliset Casut is a Carmelite nun who helps to run the International Romero Center, a small museum located in the modest building where Romero lived as archbishop. Among other things, it preserves the small Chevrolet he used to move around the city and the spartan bedroom where he slept.

Casut put the point as simply as possible: Fran-cis, she said, is the pope Romero would have been if he had ever been elected to the job.

Of course, that’s a hypothesis impossible to prove or disprove. Beatifications, however, are acts of faith, and you’d have been hard-pressed in El Salvador last week to find many fans of both Romero and Francis who didn’t share the sense that they represent alter egos.

Blessed Oscar Romero

Information Directory

CatholicCare Family Help Line 1300 1300 52

St Brigid’s Primary School 9558 6926

Casimir Catholic College 9558 2888

Catholic Church Marriage Tribunal 9390 5120

Baptisms Preparation: 1st Sundays 10am Presentation: 2nd Sunday Masses Baptisms: 3rd & 4th Sundays at 12 noon or at Masses

Marriages Preferably 6 months notice Contact: Parish Secretary

Pastoral Ministry Contacts: Adult Sacraments Sr Elena CanCare Fr John, Jenny, Maree Care of Sick & Aged Sr Elena CCD in State Schools Sue King Children’s Sacraments Fr John Cultural C’tee Maria Barlow-Sawaszenko Ecumenical & Interfaith John McGrath Sr Pat Bowthorpe FMM Family Groups Carole Price Finance C’tee Michael Curran Justice & Peace Fr Peter, Peter Jennings Liturgical Ministries Fr John, Sr Elena Men’s Club: Arthur Kassis, John Skinner, Mick Ward Pastoral Council John Skinner, Paige Bullen PPC Committees: - Communication/Engagement: - Nurturing Liturgy: Paige Bullen - Social Justice: Peter Jennings - Spiritual Growth: - Strong Community: Michael Ward

We Remember

Recently Deceased: Ken Kean; Alan James; Luis Barone Anniversaries: Amy Alice Cloran; Anna Hoang Thi Ngan; William Edwards; Annie Collins; John Michael Bell; Elizabeth Rose Matthews; Antonia Farrugia; Recently Ill: Owen Wall

Mass Texts: Trinity (Yr B)

First Reading: Deut. 4:32-34. 39-40 Response: Happy the people the Lord has chosen as his own. Second Reading: Romans 8:14-17 Gospel: Matthew 28: 16-20 Intercessions Response: Lord, graciously hear us

Mass Texts: Body & Blood

First Reading: Exodus 24:3-8 Response: Here I am Lord! I come to do your will. Second Reading: Hebrews 9:11-15 Gospel: Mark 14:12-16. 22-26 Intercession Response: Lord, graciously hear us

Liturgical Timetable Mon—Fri: Masses: 6.45 am, 9.00 am; Wednesday 7.00 pm Eucharistic Adoration: 7.15-8.45am. Benediction: 8.45am Public Hols: Mass 9.00am Saturday: Mass 7.30 am; Reconciliation 9-10 am; Marriages 10-3 pm; Reconciliation 4-4.45 pm; Mass: 5 pm; & 6.30 pm (Vietnamese) Sunday: Mass at 7.30 am, 9 am, 10 .30am (multilingual); 4.30pm (Viet); 6pm

Ministry of Care & Support to Aged and Infirm Mass is celebrated monthly in all the Nursing Homes in Marrickville.

Communion is taken to sick residents in Nursing Homes & in their homes on a weekly basis, either by Ministers of Care or family members.

Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick is offered after Masses on First Fridays, and at the 10am Italian mass on 4th Fridays. Also available on request and

recommended before attending hospital for major surgery.

Sunday Mass Ministries: Most Holy Trinity & Corpus Christi (Yr B)

Parish Collections

Counters: This week (1/6) Lea’s Team Counters: Next Week (8/6) Jim/Lalo/Maree

23/24 May 1st (Passionists): $ 2,185 2nd (Parish): $ 4,963 Cash & Envelopes:$ 3,722 Credit Cards: $ 1,241

16/17 1st (Passionists): $ 1,870 2nd (Parish): $ 4,918

Lectors/Commentators Communion Ministers Altar Servers

30/31 May 6/7 June 30/31 May 6/7 June 30/31 May 6/7 June

5 pm Sat Paul Cloran Vanessa Penitani Mary Leask

Liz Carnabuci Susie Houssarini Michael Price

Carmel Cloran Carole Price Michael Price Ofa Tupola Kelelia Apikotoa

Elizabeth Delaney SGS Carole Price Michael Price Carmel Cloran Paul Cloran Adrienne Harverson

Leon Tupola Gary Tupola Visesio Siasau Joseph Kula Alycia Young

Leon Tupola Gary Tupola Visesio Siasau Joseph Kula Alycia Young

7.30am

Sun

Marg Barrett Anne Lowe

Janice Schubach Marg Barrett Margaret Kelly

Mary Entriken Theresa James Maria Mansour

Mary Entriken Denis Habermann Michael Dillon

Michael Dillon Michael Dillon

9 am Sun Christina Day Bec Wong Debbie Jabbour

John Skinner Therese Skinner Bec Wong

Frank Cowell Justin Hartany Jessica Hartany Jennie Oesman Peter Jennings George Harb

Frank Cowell Jennie Oesman Justin Hartany Jose Hartany Jessica Hartany

Michael Moreira Claude Walton Louis Walton Jacqueline Flett Nicholas Sourlas

Xavier Rego Naomi Rego Natasha Rego Olivia Moreira Ivy Bullen Fergus Bullen Theodore Bullen

10.30 am

Sun

Ted Bain Italian Reader Mely Siasat

Kalala Sakopo Italian Reader Maria Barlow

Maria Barlow Antoinette Grigg Fiona Paul Jessica Paul Adrienne Harverson

Fiona Paul Jessica Paul Angie Chiapoco Elvie Chiapoco George Harb

Albert Naticchia Anthony Naticchia John Dorrington

Geoffrey Lean Aldrick De Vera Alfred De Ver James Poonan

6 pm Sun Thomas Hill Arthur Kassis

Arthur Kassis Wendy Mason Robert Gascoigne

Dominic Manansala Alisa Nasic Maria Fuller Katrina Fuller N Fernandez

Melissa Saxton Maria Fuller Katrina Fuller Kristy Cloran Davis Cloran

Tony Hayek Tony Hayek

Parish Calendar 2015 & Coming Events

June 2 PPC/Fin/Organ Meeting 5 Fr Jim to USA for 4 months Berne School Mass (9 am)

School Mass (9 am) Italian Mass (10.30 am) Men’s Club (7.30 pm) 6 Gardening (9-11am) 6-7 Corpus Christi Sunday Corpus Christi Procession

8 Public Holiday Mass (9 am) 10 Vinnies Conference 12 Confirmation Reflection Day Deanery Meeting (5.30pm) 13 Family Groups Soup Night 13-14 11th Sunday of the Year

Parish Calendar

Passionist Ministries & Activities Fr Peter, George, St Brigid’s. Fr John at Cathedral Fr Michael at Bossley Park Parish. Frs Lex & Peter, marriages. Fr John Auram in PNG Bro Martin in PNG Fr Phil Smith in India Fr Ron Davoren arrives to join our CP Community

Overseas Mission Mission Appeal Preaching in the USA for the Passionists in PNG and Vietnam happens each year at this time. Fr Jim Elmore leaves on 5th June for 4 months, Fr Peter Gardiner on 8th June for 2 months. They will be joined by Fr Jeff Foale (Vietnam) and Fr Phil Smith (India).

New School Enrolments School enrolments for 2016 are now due. Don’t miss out by delaying. If you know of families thinking of enrolling at St Brigid’s School, please ask if they have enrolled.

St Brigid’s on Social Media Our new Web Site went live last weekend. This is still a work in progress, so we welcome any sug-gestions on what you think we should have on it. Please contact the Office. Our FaceBook page contin-ues to add new friends each week. Thank you for inviting your families and friends to “like” us.

New Position: Pastoral Associate Youth Ministry

The Parish invites interested persons to apply for a new position of Youth Minister, starting at 15 hrs per fortnight with potential of expanding. This might suit Uni Students in Schools of Education or Social Work. Further information is available from parish@stbrigid.org.au __________________________

31 May: Cathedral Blessing of the Statues of Women Saints

Last year the Passionists & Par-ish shared in the cost of a Statue of St Maria Goretti which has now been installed with other female saints in the Reredos of the Lady Chapel at St Mary’s Cathedral, behind the High Altar. We have received an invitation to attend the 10.30am Mass & Bless-ing of the Statues. The Lady Chapel is behind the High Altar. Fr John will be concelebrating this Mass. Parish-ioners are welcome to attend.

31 May: Teenage Youth Group(s)

We invite teenagers to come to an initial gathering, to meet other teenagers, to share in some pizza, drinks & fun, and to get to know one another. The evening will be super-vised and parents are welcome, though if not attending in person should arrange to collect their chil-dren by 8.30pm. It’s this Sunday after 6pm Mass, from 7pm until 8:30pm, in the Upper Room of the Annex, and it’s for 12-18 year olds who are affiliated with St Brigid’s Parish in some way.

Please RSVP in any of the follow-ing ways : Sign up at the back of the church; email parish@stbrigid.org.au, or phone the parish 8577 5670. On the night we will be talking to the kids about activities they may be interested in doing as a group(s). We will use these ideas to develop a program for the coming months. Michael Ward & Adrienne Harver-

son (Pastoral Council Members)

3rd June: Spirituality in the Pub: Acts of Loving Kindness

Speakers Fran McCarthy, Principal of Jarjum College Redfern, and our friend Fr Dave Smith of Ho-ly Trinity Anglican Church Dulwich Hill. Donation entry. Info Marea 0414 873 910. 7.30-9pm at the Paddington RSL Club, 220 Oxford St, Paddington, opposite the Town Hall.

6 Jun: Parish Gardening First Saturday from 9-11am. All welcome.

7 June: Walk With Christ The Annual Diocesan Corpus Christi Procession starts at 2.30pm from St Patrick’s Church Hill and pro-ceeds to the Cathedral Forecourt.

The Gratitude Project