Gain in Loss: an Interview

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s Christians accompany Jesus during Holy Week a guide could assist this year’s different experience of it. “Dominican Father Paul Murray is one of English-language Catholicism’s most prominent contemporary theologians and poets,” Mr. John L. Allen prefaced his 2-part interview. Part 1 looks at history and the necessity for “spiritual communion.” “Forced solitude” and “affliction” shape Part 2. (The link to Part1 is at the top.)

Dominican Father Paul Murray is one of English-language Catholicism’s most prominent contemporary theologians and poets, and he reflects on the spiritual significance and fall out of the coronavirus pandemic.https://t.co/VxI4Mgn8OS

— Crux (@Crux) April 4, 2020

The Long Reach

When Moses fretted to the Eternal God, wondering how Moses could feed the wandering people, the Eternal replied it would be done by divine power: Is the Eternal One’s hand too short? (Numbers 11.23). Some  translate: Is there a limit to the Eternal’s power? One renders it colloquially: Is this beyond the Lord’s reach? 

Feeling as though we are beyond God’s reach is easy these days. We are out of reach of nearly everyone. Prudently foregoing access to the usual ritual behaviour that assures us God and humans are near stretches us to find other ways to recall and to feel God’s eternal closeness. Churches are trying to remind us the “outstretched hand” of God is not too short to hold all humans. The metaphor belongs to one “at the global epicenter of the crisis,” Angelo Cardinal Bagnasco of Genoa. Mr. John L. Allen Jr. related Cardinal Bagnasco’s pastoral care and “optimism.”

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Wikimage Panathenaic Genova panorama… by "Bbruno / CC BY-SA 4.0"

Talk, Tenderness, Trip

Pope Francis is the first pope to have offered a TED talk. The talk is a first, but its focus was all Francis: he “called for more tenderness in the world.”

His visit tomorrow to Egypt is his tender care for the Christians living there and experiencing persecution. The Copts experienced it as Holy Week began.

Interview and Comment

On 05 March the Italian Corriere della Sera published an interview with Pope Francis. He spoke about several topics, including child abuse. His words about it elicited quick reaction from those critical of the way the church responds to abuse. John L. Allen Jr. commented that “both sides have a point.”

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Wiki-mage by Christoph Wagener of Pope Francis CC BY-SA 3.0