The following letters, appearing in the December 28th Sydney Morning Herald, address the need for renewal.
Church has become irrelevant for too many
The stark revelation that so many priests in the Australian Catholic Church are being seriously traumatised should be a grave concern for the hierarchy (''Priests lose faith in their church'', February 26-27). It is a desperate cry for an aggiornamento, including a restructuring of the institution. There is only a forlorn hope that this will happen, given how the vibrant and liberating spirit of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), the spirit of change and open-mindedness, has been effectively frustrated by subsequent papacies.
Sadly the church has become irrelevant in the lives of so many people and fails to meet them meaningfully in their lived experiences. The continuing exodus of the disenchanted and disenfranchised from the pews could well be a contributing factor to the bleakness experienced by so many priests. The Bishop of Chichester may well have prophesied a grim reality when he noted in 1590 that ''the nearer the church, the further from God''. Sadly for so many priests and laity this has already happened.
Father Peter Dresser, Kandos
The troubles within the Catholic Church (''Holy Disorder'', February 26-27) are summed up in the statement ''the church was not - and was never intended to be - a democracy''.
It is an oligarchy and, as in most oligarchies, it is the power-hungry that rise to the top and it requires a revolution to remove them. The Middle East is a classic example.
David Wills, Cromer
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The following is the response to a letter previously published in the Irish Times.
The desire for a Catholic Spring should not be confined only to personal conversion as Desmond Fisher infers (December 30th). It is not even about changing a few canon law provisions to allow married or women priests.
It implies radical surgery right into the body of the Catholic Church so as to eliminate the cancerous growths that need to be removed so that people outside the church can find its message once again a credible guide to life.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/letters/2012/0102/1224309714826.html
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The Pope has named a married, former Episcopal bishop, head of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter for disaffected Anglicans who want to join the Catholic Church.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/us/catholic-church-unveils-order-for-ex-episcopalians.html
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Bill Nemitz writes about the 30-second spot funded by Catholics Come Home, which began airing on December 17. He addresses the “elephant in the room.”
http://www.pressherald.com/news/church-ignores-scandal-in-welcome-home-ads_2012-01-01.html