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50th International Eucharistic Congress (Main Forum)
by desi 
, Australia, Tuesday, June 12, 2012, 03:05 (347 days ago)
(For info! The Ireland football team were playing in Poland yesterday in the Euro Championship).
In terms of numbers, the passion and prayers went to Poland yesterday – Poznan trumped the RDS
Where was everybody? The rows of empty seats told their own story on a strangely muted day in the RDS showgrounds.
The opening day of the Eucharistic Congress was years in the planning.
Churches around the country hung out the white bunting in readiness. The faithful were given plenty of notice.
A crowd of 20,000 pilgrims was predicted. But the final turnout came nowhere near.
Apparently 7,000 pilgrims will travel from overseas for this week’s celebrations. A fair number of them attended yesterday’s event. Add to them the huge contingent of priests and religious in the crowd and it pointed to a disappointing display of local support.
But it made for easy parking, a fascinating experience and, one suspects, a happy hunting ground for future historians.
Not quite 1932 – the last time Ireland hosted the Eucharistic Congress, when over half a million people crowded into Dublin for the final Mass.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/0611/1224317694548.html
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by Drummoyne Tram , USA, Tuesday, June 12, 2012, 03:36 (347 days ago) @ desi
Yesterday, the Irish Times on the web carried a photo apparently taken from in front of the altar, looking at those assembled in chairs on the pitch. It appeared to show hundreds of clerics in white, surrounded by the "ordinary faithful" in the stands. The caption said that those in front were bishops and cardinals.
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The photo says much about who the organizers presume to be the church, heavily loaded towards bishops and cardinals who came from afar.
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By the way, Croatia, a Catholic country, beat Ireland, a Catholic country, in Poznan, a Catholic city.
Joe
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by Drummoyne Tram , USA, Tuesday, June 12, 2012, 03:39 (347 days ago) @ Drummoyne Tram
Links to newspaper articles and photos often go stale quickly. A current link to the photo of the "important guys" at the RDS stadium is here.
Joe
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by desi , Australia, Tuesday, June 12, 2012, 10:39 (347 days ago) @ Drummoyne Tram
An interesting photo, as it also looks as though the 20,000 seater stadium was full.
About 12,000 Catholics, many from overseas, gathered for an open-air mass in a half-full Dublin stadium on Sunday at the start of the Eucharistic Congress, a week-long event organised by the Vatican every four years in a different part of the world.
Not sure how many of the 7,500 overseas visitore were there of that 12,000!
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1657839/Catholic-faith-on-line-at-conference
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by Helen , The other side of Australia, Tuesday, June 12, 2012, 10:43 (347 days ago) @ Drummoyne Tram
Wednesday’s programme includes sessions on caring for priests, poets of the Eucharist and the missions. The day will end with a procession.
Once you have seen the photo and then read this you have to realize that nothing will change. Clericalism will reign supreme and the 'new evangelization' is only there to white wash us into thinking that things will change.
So much for a more organic and inclusive Church!!
Helen
Let us light a candle and say to the dark, we beg to differ
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by Drummoyne Tram , USA, Tuesday, June 12, 2012, 10:53 (347 days ago) @ desi
I am guilty of wrongful sarcasm in my comments about the photo of bishops and cardinals Sunday at the RDS field. A second photo in the Irish Times shows that bishops and cardinals sat on only one side of the front rows of the pitch. This second photo showed that equal space was given to wheelchair people on the left side (as facing the altar). Only about half the space allotted to wheelchairs was used. In the center, there were empty rows on the pitch. Also, the top five or six rows in the stands were empty.
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Lesson to be learned: Consider what may be outside the frame of a photo. This is the wider view.
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Joe
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by Helen , The other side of Australia, Tuesday, June 12, 2012, 10:58 (347 days ago) @ Drummoyne Tram
Amazing what a bit of editing will do to make a picture tell a thousand words - whether true or not!!
Yes, the close up did look like only the clerics were on the field - but who was supposed to sit in the empty middle row????
Helen
Let us light a candle and say to the dark, we beg to differ
locked50th International Eucharistic Congress - Some people are never happy!
by desi , Australia, Tuesday, June 12, 2012, 12:49 (346 days ago) @ Helen
From a Fr Gabriel Burke's website
I will be in Dublin for the week attending the congress. Today we have beautiful weather and a huge crowd for the opening.
Then the sting in the tail!
The "Benedictine" plan for an Altar was missing. Even more disconcerting was the blatant disregard for Church teaching at Holy Communion. Lay people administered the chalice while at least 200 priest were seated. The chalice was provided for caeliacs, however people were taking the sacred hosts and receiving by indication. Not only is this forbidden by the Church it is also hazardous to caeliacs
In case you were wondering!
Tomorrow morning I attend a high Mass in St. Kevin's Harrington st.
http://www.frgabrielburke.com/2012/06/international-eucharistic-congress-day.html
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Perhaps the open spaces were to keep the hierarchy insulated from WOMEN. I think I have seen bigger crowds on rainy nights at Suncorp Stadium for Broncos' games.
There are many better things to do in Dublin than sitting around in such company. They should try some of the pubs. Might hear a few uncomfortable truths over a Guinness or seven.
J A Holznagel
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by PeterR , Tuesday, June 12, 2012, 19:40 (346 days ago) @ desi
"When will +THEY ever learn?"
Just wondering!
Peter
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But the wider picture just shows the future "leaner, smaller Church"!!
That IS what they want!
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by desi , Australia, Wednesday, June 13, 2012, 16:25 (345 days ago) @ kaythegardener
THE Irish Catholic Church will not address the issue of clerical sex abuse during the week-long International Eucharistic Congress, organisers confirmed yesterday.
The decision was confirmed on the same day a Filipino archbishop held an hour-long discussion on clerical sex abuse in Asia.
But organisers of the Dublin event have defended their decision not to include an equivalent address by an Irish archbishop. Congress general secretary Fr Kevin Doran told the Irish Independent it was felt a presentation from someone who was outside "the situation" would be more appropriate.
And why would that be?
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/speech-on-asia-sex-abuse-but-irish-church-stays...
locked50th International Eucharistic Congress..some interesting numbers.
by desi , Australia, Wednesday, June 13, 2012, 13:44 (345 days ago) @ desi
Just more than half of an expected 20,000 pilgrims descended on Dublin's RDS yesterday for the opening event of the International Eucharistic Congress.
Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin and the Papal Legate Cardinal Marc Ouellet addressed an audience made up largely of overseas pilgrims from 123 countries, in a ceremony where numbers were noticeably less than anticipated.
The attendance is a far cry from 1932 when more than a quarter of the population,or one million, attended the international event.
More than 236 cardinals and bishops and 1,200 priests and deacons are in Dublin for the €11.8m festival.
If, according to estimates, there were 11,000 there and you take away the (estimated) 7,500 registered overseas visitors and the cardinals and priests one is left with a total number of Irish there at 2,064!
Can't be right surely? or perhaps it can! 
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/eucharistic-congress-just-half-of-expected-2000...
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And how many of them were the pious old ladies and any Opus Dei ? Take away those, and the figure could be much smaller. Take out the tourists and it would shrink further.
J A Holznagel
locked50th International Eucharistic Congress..some interesting numbers.
Has anyone compared the crowd at tonight's State of Origin with that of the Eucharistic Congress in Dublin?
J A Holznagel
lockedHow Catholic Church is no longer centre stage in Ireland
by desi , Australia, Friday, June 15, 2012, 18:39 (343 days ago) @ judith
An interesting article about The Congress especially the part detailing the discussion going on re 'Transubstantiation'.
Read more: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/columnists/eamon-mccann/how-catholic-church-i...
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