LENTEN REFLECTION with the Australian Bishops: Week One (Sunday Forum)

by Brian Coyne , LINDEN, NSW, Monday, February 15, 2010, 22:24 (199 days ago)

Dear all,

the first reflection is now online at:

I have to confess that I really did not know what to expect when I wrote the Catholica introduction to this series yesterday [LINK]. Something, somewhere deep down inside me told me that it was going to be good. I was not at all disappointed from what I have just seen. Each of the bishops comes across as very human — a struggling person like all the rest of us. This is no "preaching from pulpits" — as I half feared in what I wrote yesterday — but each of these men come across as very accessible — expressing much of their own humanness and vulnerability. The communication is intimate — as one-to-one as it is possible to get speaking to an audience of thousands. I extend my deepest congratulations to each of the bishops and to the people working with Virginia Ryan at the Broken Bay Institute and Vividas who have put this together. The challenge now is to get enough people to pause long enough in their lives and take this in. I tell ya, I'm so excited this even gives me some hope for the Church again — and I've been rapidly losing that for a considerable period. I have a hunch this exercise is going to be one of the single most exciting initiatives we've yet seen the bishops make collectively. Perhaps even catechetically more effective than World Youth Day.

These are wonderful reflections from each of the bishops and I think delivered in the sort of language that will be accessible to the many. I'm going to have one more look at the video before I retire tonight and will prepare my own response tomorrow as a starter for the discussions here on Catholica. In the meantime if anyone wants to jump in and make comments ahead of that they will be most welcome. (I am considering preparing a video response which will require some editing but have not yet made a final decision about that.)

We continue to welcome others who will volunteer to write or produce a more extended reflection each week responding to the readings and the bishops and perhaps to comments made by others in our own community. The purpose of this exercise is to strengthen our own sense of community and solidarity as we make our personal journeys through life.

Brian Coyne
[Editor & Publisher]