I am Church too

I am enormously saddened by Cardinal Wilfrid Napier’s article in The Southern Cross of February 18-24 regarding the changes to the liturgical responses.

I would have expected from him an empathetic pastoral response to the pain of so many Catholics whose letters have been published. Perhaps a reassurance that the meaning remains the same in spite of an awkward literal translation, or perhaps an acknowledgment that “for us men” was not intended to be exclusionary, and that “men” could be dropped and thus express more clearly the intended meaning.

Instead, we received a patriarchal response emphasising our ignorance of the issues involved, and therefore our lack of qualification “to criticise the work done by hand-picked experts in a variety of fields”. Oh, dear!

The lament that The Southern Cross has ceased to be and therefore needs to “become the voice of a Church which believes implicitly and explicitly in the presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit” is extremely hurtful. Indeed, I believe “implicitly and explicitly”, and I too am Church, as are the concerned people who wrote with love on the pages of The Southern Cross.

May the Holy Spirit guide us all!

Miriam D’Andrea, Springs