Articles by Michael Whelan SM, PhD

Historian, Giuseppe Alberigo, offers a good summary of the context within which the Synod of Bishops was re-born in our day:
“Pope John XXIII had decided that the first topic the Council would work on would be the liturgy. This was the aspect of the Church’s life in which renewal had already made the most progress, and the preparatory project for it was the only one that had found a consensus among the bishops, who had already been sensitised by the liturgical movement.

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Synod, synodality and conversation
Michael Whelan SM PhD

Pope Francis’ writes:
“Dialogue is much more than the communication of a truth. It arises from the enjoyment of speaking and it enriches those who express their love for one another through the medium of words. This is an enrichment which does not consist in objects but in persons who share themselves in dialogue” (Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, #142).

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Martin Buber (1878-1965)
“A time of genuine religious conversations is beginning—not those so-called but fictitious conversations where none regarded and addressed his partner in reality, but genuine dialogues, speech from certainty to certainty, but also from one openhearted person to another open-hearted person. Only then will genuine common life appear, not that of an identical content of faith which is alleged to be found in all religions, but that of the situation, of anguish and of expectation” (Martin Buber, Introduction to Between Man and Man, London: Collins, 1947/1961, 24).

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Without God All Things Are Lawful
Michael Whelan SM PhD

The Emmy Award winning TV writer/producer, Norman Lear, in 1992 addressed a Joint Faculty Seminar of the Harvard Divinity School and the Harvard Business School. In his presentation he argued that the traditional institutional sources of values in our society – the church, family, education and civil authority – have waned. He argued that business has now become “the fountainhead of values in our society”, largely suppressing in the process “that mysterious inner life”, what we refer to as “the spiritual life”.

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By Michael Whelan SM

Three months before he died on 7 March 1274, St Thomas Aquinas had an extraordinary “experience” while celebrating Mass. As a result of this “experience”, St Thomas refused to do any further work on the Summa Theologica – his major life project. The English Dominican Thomistic scholar, Brian Davies, tells us that Aquinas’ secretary, Reginald of Piperno, begged him to return to the writing. St Thomas replied: “Reginald, I cannot, because all that I have written seems like straw to me” (Brian Davies, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas, Oxford University Press, 1993, 9).

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Spiritual Practices and Attitudes 11 – A Primary Conversation
Notes by Michael Whelan SM

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Notes by Michael Whelan SM

The General Instruction of the Roman Missal (2002) goes to the heart of the Church’s teaching on the Eucharist:

The sacrificial nature of the Mass, solemnly asserted by the Council of Trent in accordance with the Church’s universal tradition, [Ecumenical Council of Trent, Session 22, Doctrina de ss. Missae sacrificio, 17 September 1562 : Enchiridion Symbolorum, H. Denzinger and A. Schönmetzer, editors (editio XXXIII, Freiburg: Herder, 1965; hereafter, Denz-Schön), 1738-1759.] was reaffirmed by the Second Vatican Council, which offered these significant words about the Mass: ‘At the Last Supper our Savior instituted the Eucharistic Sacrifice of his Body and Blood, by which he would perpetuate the Sacrifice of the Cross throughout the centuries until he should come again, thus entrusting to the Church, his beloved Bride, the memorial of his death and resurrection.’

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The Number One Enemy of Christmas
Michael Whelan SM PhD

One of the indispensable tasks of any …. formulation [of Christology] will surely have to be a convincing vindication of the thoroughgoing humanness of Jesus, a humanness which the classical Christology formally and officially defended, but practically and effectively undermined. [Donald P. Gray, “The Incarnation: God’s Giving and Man’s Receiving,” Horizons, 1 (1974), 1]

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How we are affected by what happened in the 4th century.
Michael Whelan SM PhD

The change which affected the priesthood at that time (ie in the 5th century) was itself a consequence of an even deeper change: one which affected ecclesiology as a whole. Mentalities passed from a conception of the ‘Church, community of Christians’ to one which accepted the ‘distance between the lay people and the Church of the clerics’. In the first state there was ‘an organic union between pastors and faithful’ in matters touching liturgical celebrations, councils and other activities of church life. In the second state the idea that predominates is that ‘the whole Christian life and the religious state depend upon the priests, their fidelity, the purity of their life, and their learning’.

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The self-emptying of Divine Presence
Notes by Michael Whelan SM

•“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew.

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