Since I returned to Ireland in 2013 and reacquainted myself with the Church in the country of my birth, having departed to study for the
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Category: Popular Piety
The bizarre effects of Christmas bazaars
The rejection of a “mini” Lent theology of Advent (almost always without any sense of the history of the season) is growing alongside the tsunami of the retail Christmas.
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Involuntary Immigration, Feast Days, Devotions, Prayer and Poetry
For many of us, today is Halloween, all hallows eve, the Vigil of All Saints, the last day of October, Mary’s month, month of the Rosary, month of the Queen of all saints.
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The Morning after the Feast of Francis
What I am most intrigued about in regard to the pet-blessing upswing is the quickness with which it has become detached from its origins in the feast of Francis, and how the world of pet-related commerce seems to have led it along.
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Pray for Journalists
We need to pray in ways that recall the community’s investment in courageous journalism, and pray for those reporters who face persecution and threats around the world.
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Ritually Responding to Disaster: Reporting from the Canadian National Worship Conference
What have churches learned from the expanding ritual repertoire of disaster response?
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Inculturation and imagination: the aesthetics of liturgical formation
I kept thinking I would hear Cree music; what I heard were Protestant hymns sung in Swampy Cree, N-dialect.
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At odds with ourselves: the calendrical conflicts of bi-ritual ecclesial communities
Many parishes have one Sunday liturgy using the prayer book, and the others using the newer resources.
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Standing together: the solidarity of prayer
I am not attempting to erase differences between Christianity and Islam or even advocate for interreligious prayer, but I find it helpful to reflect on how a visual and kinesthetic practice embodying an Islamic lex orandi lex credendi may function as a call to reflection on Christian liturgy and the importance of solidarity in body as well as spirit.
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Raising Mass Attendance
Is anything that gets people through the door worth doing?
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