News Item: : Vale of Tears...
(Category: Torch of The Faith News)
Posted by admin
Wednesday 18 March 2015 - 08:43:12
This news item is from Torch of The Faith
( http://www.torchofthefaith.com/news.php?extend.904 )
(Category: Torch of The Faith News)
Posted by admin
Wednesday 18 March 2015 - 08:43:12
A number of our readers are aware that we used to be involved with the Maryvale Certificate in Catechesis (MCC). Between 2009 and 2013, we gave support to the course through lectures, marking and retreat days. It used to be encouraging to meet so many grassroots catechists being formed according to the mind and heart of the Church. These were the days of Dr. Petroc Willey, Dr. Caroline Farey, Dr. Andrew Beards, Mrs. Carol Harnett (MA) and other good people, such as Deacon Nick Donnelly. In those days, the course seemed to be playing a part in the liturgical and catechetical restorations occuring in the reign of Pope Benedict XVI. As such, we used to recommend the course to friends and anyone wishing to spread and go deeper in the Faith.
Whenever we visited Maryvale, we used to pray in the choir loft at the back of the historic chapel. The window to the left of the above picture linked Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman's old room to that chapel. This was the context of his famous letter to a friend in 1846. Newman, then recently converted to the Catholic Faith, wrote: 'I am writing in the next room to the chapel. It is such an incomprehensible blessing to have Christ in bodily presence in one's house, within one's walls, as swallows up all other privileges and destroys, or should destroy, every pain.'Â
Even the office where the administration for the MCC was carried out used to be Newman's private library. Whenever I remembered how Newman's words - repeated in a sermon by Canon Michael Culhane in the early 90's - had helped me to also convert to the Faith, I would be in awe to find myself working and praying in his former home. Mysterious are the ways of God!Â
Nevertheless, we wish readers to understand that we have had no involvement with Maryvale since 2013.
This is important to understand in light of emerging news on the internet. Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice have pointed out, through their on-line newsletter The Flock, that Maryvale has appointed Marie Cooke as the new director of F.E. Courses, with particular responsibility for the MCC.
In light of the orthodoxy of the formation that we had encountered in former days, it is disconcerting to discover that Marie Cooke is a forum moderator for Glasgow's wing of the dissenting group A Call to Action (ACTA). It will be remembered that this is the group pushing for contraception, same-sex 'marriage' and women's ordination. ACTA certainly seems to be growing like topsy and getting everywhere.
A bit of on-line research also confirms The Flock's news that Marie Cooke is pursuing a PhD based on the Australian programme Woman and Man: One in Christ Jesus. In January 2013, Marie Cooke advertised for help with her research on the on-line newsletter of the group called Catholic Women's Ordination (CWO). This group is dedicated to the 'campaign' for the ordination of women in the Catholic Church; even though this issue was forever closed by St. John Paul II in his Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (1994). Pope Francis affirmed this official Church teaching in 2013, when he stated that Pope John Paul II's formula was definitive and therefore ''that door is closed''. Â
It is heartbreaking to hear news such as that reported by The Flock, especially when one recalls Newman's hymn from the Dream of Gerontius (1865): 'And I hold in veneration, for the love of Him alone, Holy Church as His creation, and Her teachings as His own.'
Let us then reiterate - We have had no involvement with Maryvale since 2013.
Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman - Pray for us and for England!
This news item is from Torch of The Faith
( http://www.torchofthefaith.com/news.php?extend.904 )