Praying the Advent season: Putting the coming of Christ into Christmas life

It is now nearly a decade since a revision of the Roman Missal was predicted and now five and a half years since the Missal appeared in Latin. The process of translating the 1377 pages is an immense project. After all the turmoil within ICEL\u27s structures, the work is going ahead. With Advent, the focus of new translations is in expressing fully the biblical references to the future Messiah in the orations. In the Roman Missal3, a new policy is set making the tri-fold form of Solemn Blessing a unique fixture of Advent. As Pope Benedict is asking, the sense of mission and not just dismissal is a challenge to live the spirit of the Advent season. This article challenges readers to enter into the spirit of the shortest liturgical season at the time of the greatest commercial distractions of Christmas sales and to ensure that the prayers are articulated with the confidence of the season. Pastoral Liturgy is published by The University of Notre Dame Australia, School of Philosophy and Theology, Fremantle

The restoration of Holy Week: The timeline in modern times

There are precursors in ecclesial legislation impacting on the celebration of Holy Week at all levels which can be cited from many eras and epochs

The Cult of Saints: Source and origin of the practices

Throughout Christian history, through its many forms and pracices, there has been a prominent meandering pathway that has undergone some shaping and developing through nearly every century of the Christian Era and even before

The liturgical year 2008: A year to remember?

In late 2007 there were Press accounts drawing attention to the transfer the next year of the celebration of St Patrick’s Day to Saturday March 15th. For all its strengths, the Roman Liturgical Calendar for any single year is not as uniform or regular as many may presume or expect. There are many variable factors, most prominently the so called Moveable Feasts which are mostly connected with the cycles of the moon but need to be tied to a calendar date set by the sun. This means the date of Easter 2008 (March 23) is the earliest in 2008 years and won’t happen again for another 200 years. In the planning of the preparation of the Liturgical Calendar, Rome published in Notitiae arrangements for certain feast days that would be impacted by the unusually early Easter. In detail the changes affected feast days in March which were transferred to other days so as to protect the integrity of the celebration of Holy Week and the Easter Octave as special times. In practice, this meant St Patrick\u27s Day is to be celebrated on March 15th, St Joseph on March 14th, and the Annunciation on March 31st. Coming from another angle, some calendar feasts happen to fall on a Sunday in 2008. Thus Epiphany is celebrated on January 6th being a Sunday and not the nearest Sunday to the 6th. Pastoral Liturgy, is published by the University of Notre Dame Australia, School of Philosophy and Theology, Fremantle

Classified timelines of vernacular liturgy: Responsibility timelines & vernacular liturgy

These timelines focus attention on the use of the vernacular in the Roman Rite, especially developed in the Renewal and Reform of the Second Vatican Council. The extensive timelines have been broken into ten stages, drawing attention to a number of periods and reasons in the history of those eras for the unique experience of vernacular liturgy and the issues connected with it in the Western Catholic Church of our time. The role and function of International Committee of English in the Liturgy (ICEL) over its forty year existence still has a major impact on the way we worship in English. This article deals with the restructuring of ICEL which had been the centre of much controversy in recent years and now operates under different protocols. Pastoral Liturgy is published by the University of Notre Dame Australia, School of Philosophy and Theology, Fremantle

Celebrating Australia Day: Unwrapping The Great Southland of the Holy Spirirt

To coincide with his arrival in Australia on Sunday july 13th 2008, the Vatican has arranged to release The official message to Australians from Pope Benedict XVI. He called Australia the great southern land of the Holy Spirit (sic). This caused some interesting responses amongst commentators in the media about the provenance of this title and who used it first. The Perth Sunday Times, under the by-line of Tony Vermeer in Sydney, claimed THE Pope has christened Australia the great southern land of the Holy Spirirt, as if the Pope had invented the phrase. The initial consternation of the jopurnalist was perhaps further aggravated by the use of the same phrase by Cardinal Pell in the Opening Mass on July 15th

Australia\u27s other Anzac Day: April 25 on the Western Front

this paper is a response to my opportunity to take part in a pilgrimage to the World War I Western Front Battle sites, and graves, as part of a Military History Tour fro Anzac Day 2009. I took part in this tour in order to fulfil a long term ambition to visit, as others in my family have done, the grave of my grandfather\u27s nephew, Frank O\u27Callaghan, who is buried in Poperinghe, near Ypres in Belgium. I am also embarking on the publication of Frank\u27s brother Jack\u27s war diary from 1916. Jack was an Ambulance Driver and his reflections on the pastoral impact of various sections of the war effort form a powerful back drop to appreciating the long term power of pastoral care in battle zones, which provides a framework for examining myths and realities of ANZAC with new eyes

Recovering the Paschal Mystery: Rediscovery in the Year of the Priest?

Any study of the place of the Paschal Mystery in the life of the Church cannot go forward without an explanation of how the preeminence of the Paschal Mystery has been recovered in recent decades on the rediscovery of more ancient texts and re-expressed in the contemporary liturgical books

Renewal and reform in the Liturgy: Fording the impasse

At roughly the same time as the First Fleet was sailing from European climes towards its monumentous first landfall in the Great South Land in 1788, another event was taking place in Europe which would create its own waves and have an effect on the Church in our day. This was the Synod of Pistoia, convened in 1786