Opening “a liturgical Pandora’s box”? A parish priest reflects on the “family Mass” | Bridges and Tangents

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Opening “a liturgical Pandora’s box”? A parish priest reflects on the “family Mass”

September 30, 2013 by Fr Stephen Wang

See this article by Fr Martin Boland at Jericho Tree:

Opening “a liturgical Pandora’s box”? A parish priest reflects on the “family Mass”

Posted in Religion | Tagged children's Mass, family, family Mass | 2 Comments

2 Responses

on October 1, 2013 at 12:09 pm | Reply bccs charity (@bccs_charity)

May I commend this initiative. It is a sensitive one to raise but a valuable one and worth the risk. Working to find ways of making the best worship for the whole of the parish family requires understanding and tolerance of every member and this is a positive contribution to that end.
Steven Webb: Brentwood Catholic Children’s Society
on October 4, 2013 at 4:19 pm | Reply Ed

I think this is a great idea.
Sadly, I was often bored at Mass when i was a child (but not always).
The other day, a priest, brilliantly, evoked something of the magic of Mass when he compared the tabernacle to the cupboard in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. He was talking mainly to children. They were transfixed. Me even more.
In the Eucharist the magic of God / of Heaven is present amongst us. The priest was brilliantly evoking our imagination to try and “get” the idea of the Eucharist. Instead of just using safe, dry, boring theology (to a child, theology can be really, really boring to the extent of putting the child off religion). Of course, theology can be and should be used with children. But it has to be mixed up with human language too (we are, after all, humans not angels, for example), and with language that appeals to our imagination and heart (but the spiritual heart not just the emotional heart) – with imagination being one of God’s way of giving man an idea of what Heaven is like.

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