Focus Quotes

   At Mass we sing together, and pray together; we ask forgiveness, and tell God that we are unworthy to enter under his roof; we sit and stand and kneel and give each other the sign of peace with a handshake or a kiss; we take that little white bread wafer with a sip of red wine, in amnesty and mercy for the time being- which is the only time we have. Our church is no New Jerusalem, but we believe Christ is with us in the priest, in the people, in the Word, and especially in the Eucharist- that piece of bread. His presence in the bread is a kind of language; like building the New Jerusalem, it is not a language we shall manage in time.
There are congregations like ours on every continent.... Most of our parishioners, I am sure, would be surprised to learn that the Catholic Church is in crisis.

John Cornwell, 2001

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   We have been given the gospel not to tell us that there are flaws and spots in our humanity, for we more or less know that about ourselves. Rather, we have been given the gospel to tell us what we do not know about ourselves, or what our souls have forgotten. Deeper than the failings of our lives is the blessing of our nature. It is to that blessedness that we are called to be reconnected.

The Book of Creation by J. Philip Newel

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   Our Western culture suffers from a conspicuous lack of relevant and meaningful ritual... Many of the sacraments have been ritually abused by the very people who sought to propagate their sacred meaning. In the Catholic tradition, the Mass has become a formalised gathering, attendance at which is obligatory under pain of sin. The sacrament of penance (Confession), intended to mediate an experience of healing and forgiveness by a God of unconditional love, has been used over the centuries to inculcate guilt, fear, and subservience to 'legitimate' power. The Catholic system (rather than individual people or clergy) has used the sacramental practice to intimidate the faithful into subjugation and to justify religious patriarchy in its voracious hunger for power and control.

Diarmuid O' Murchu In "Reclaiming Spirituality"

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   Sometimes I feel that we are crazy to stay, putting up year after year with exclusive language, lectionary readings that demean woman, god-talk in male-only terms: a whole system designed to convince women that they are second class. Yet stay I do- at least so far. Like a few of my friends, I continue to believe that redemption for the church is possible, that a discipleship of equals can one day exist, that we can make it possible, that if we do not act it will never come about and the church will die.

Written in 1993 by Dr Marie Louise Uhr who died in Australia on June 23. '01