Category: Church

The Catholic Church in Cambodia.

Mass of the Air

The sign language interpreting
The sign language interpreters are set up in the rear of the chapel where they can see the ministers and the flow of the liturgy.
The interpreters work in pairs. Nancy (L) is the actual interpreter and Peg (R) is the prompter. Peg supplies words or phrases that may be difficult to hear and also especially feeds the lines of a hymn to Nancy in advance to give her an extra second or two to determine how to sign poetic phrasing.
Out of sight, a taping crew from a local TV station operate a control room to select cameras, change angles, and mix the feeds, producing a very professional product.

Mass of the Air

50 years ago the Archdiocese of Louisville began broadcasting a televised mass each Sunday for people who could not travel to their parish church. I was part of that early initiative, helping to provide sign language interpretation for the televised masses and also occasionally being the priest presider. Last night I went to the taping of two masses to be shown in June, to see how the project has developed in the four decades I was out of Louisville.

Before the taping, Fr. Joe Graffis met with the lector while the musicians got ready.
The masses are taped in the chapel of what was the mother house of the Ursuline Sisters of Louisville. The mother house and chapel have now been turned over to the schools that the sisters started on the campus, but the agreement allows for Mass of the Air to continue to use the chapel.

Fr. Graffis is a veteran with Mass of the Air and knows how to follow the signals of the producer and especially to keep the mass to its 28.5 minutes limit.
A core of dedicated volunteers has stayed with Mass of the Air over its 50-year run. Mass of the Air is professionally produced and other dioceses use the Louisville tape each week because they don’t have the expertise or resources to do their own televised mass.

Early Mission

This week I was at the pastoral center of the Archdiocese of Louisville and saw this map of the diocese of Bardstown (Kentucky), the first diocese established west of the Appalachian Mountains. It extended from the present Georgia border to Canada and from the Pennsylvania border to the Oklahoma border. Bishop Benedict Joseph Flaget, a missionary from France, was the first bishop and moved the diocese from Bardstown to Louisville in 1841. Coming from France to the American mid West was a daunting mission assignment!

Fratelli Tutti

Pope Francis’ Encyclical

Human rights need to be in our awareness these days as the president and congress work at voter suppression and encourage state and local authorities to do the same.

22. It frequently becomes clear that, in practice, human rights are not equal for all. Respect for those rights “is the preliminary condition for a country’s social and economic development. When the dignity of the human person is respected, and his or her rights recognized and guaranteed, creativity and interdependence thrive, and the creativity of the human personality is released through actions that further the common good”. Yet, “by closely observing our contemporary societies, we see numerous contradictions that lead us to wonder whether the equal dignity of all human beings, solemnly proclaimed seventy years ago, is truly recognized, respected, protected and promoted in every situation. In today’s world, many forms of injustice persist, fed by …. a profit-based economic model that does not hesitate to exploit, discard and even kill human beings. While one part of humanity lives in opulence, another part sees its own dignity denied, scorned or trampled upon, and its fundamental rights discarded or violated”. What does this tell us about the equality of rights grounded in innate human dignity?

Church Priorities

The Catholic Church has been active for 2000+ years and has initiated and developed many valuable programs and services. Based on the vision and teaching of Jesus, though, probably the two most important responsibilities of the church are not building schools and hospitals—valuable, even necessary as that is–but [1] providing the eucharist in which the people of God are united with Jesus their head and [2] serving the poor which Jesus constantly spoke about. Today I was at St. Frances of Rome Church, one of the oldest parishes in Louisville.

The small neighborhood church, simply but tastefully appointed, provides a warm and welcoming space for the community to gather in.
The church also each weekend puts out baskets (under the table above) to collect non-perishable foods for community food pantries. Today I dropped off a couple boxes of cereal we had to donate.

Theology Discussion

Every two weeks a group of us priests and lay people meet for two hours to discuss a theology book. Currently we are going through a book by an Irish theologian, Diarmuid O’Murchu who presents some challenging ideas about God and about humanity’s place in creation. Today for the first time we met at Nazareth Home Clifton in the lobby of the independent living building where the priests live.

This kind of gathering is really difficult in Cambodia because almost none of the laity would have the background in theology to participate and discussing a book in English would also present a big problem.

On the road again (Phnom Penh 5)

After the consecration of the new St. Joseph Church yesterday, parish communities and ministers like the brothers and sisters and priests were invited to a lunch. I sat with the Missionaries of Charity. I had mass with them last Thursday and will again this coming Thursday morning before I leave. Eating with us is quite different from the sisters’ situation not long ago when they religious community rules would not allow them to eat in public with non-community members. It is wonderful now that they are more accessible to the whole community and their gifts and talents and faith are available to everyone. Next to me is Fr. Jeanluca, a PIME (Italian mission group) priest who is rector of the Phnom Penh seminary.
Saturday morning we had the consecration of the new St. Joseph Church building. Saturday evening we had the regular weekend mass in the new venue of St. Jude Thaddeus School. The English Catholic Community uses the covered rooftop of the school.

Most of my time here in Phnom Penh this visit has been meeting with people. I had a list of tasks to be accomplished but have not completed most of them because of so many meetings with individuals. Yesterday I met with Fr. Kevin Conroy, another former Maryknoll Associate Priest. He and I lived together at the previous Maryknoll office. I met him in his new room in the Tuol Tum Poung area.

In the background in the center of the photo is a 10-storey orange building which is the guesthouse where I am staying this trip. It costs me $15 a night.

Consecration of New St. Joseph Church

Before a Catholic church is used for worship, the building is blessed and the altar is consecrated for sacred use. On May 2nd the new church at St. Joseph Church was consecrated with a long ceremony.

The ceremony, attended by perhaps 800-900 people, began outside with a procession that would around the new church building.
Once inside, Bishop Olivier presided, accompanied by the other two bishops in Cambodia and a new bishop from Thailand who is a former missionary in Cambodia.
Before the altar was consecrated, Bishop Olivier inserted relics of saints into the top of the altar–a tradition from the early days of Christianity when masses were celebrated in the places where martyrs had been killed.
Next the top of the altar was smeared with holy oil and then pots of incensed were arranged on it during a special prayer.
Finally altar cloths were put on the altar and it was ready for celebrating the mass of dedication.