Karnataka Faith Conference - Videos

Karnataka Faith Conference 2013

Dear All,

Prayer filled greetings from Jesus Youth Karnataka!

At the onset we wish you God’s choicest blessings upon you and your family.

For us Jesus Youth, the Jubilee was a time of special grace for everyone in the movement, during the course of which there were numerous occasions to reflect on the call and mission of being a Jesus Youth. The declaration of the Year of Faith has been most eagerly welcomed in the Jesus Youth movement as a God-given opportunity for ‘fostering the graces received during the Jubilee’.

In this context, Jesus Youth is initiating a series of regional conferences titled “Faith Conference 2013” across the country, with the central theme “Faith’. The conference in the region of Karnataka will be held from the 25^th (8:30am) to 27^th of January, 2013 (5:00pm) at the Apostolic Carmel Generalate (behind Sagar Hospital on Banerghata Road), Bangalore. This 3 day Conference will be based on the theme "Know the Faith", "Live the Faith" and "Share the Faith".

Accompanying youth on their journey of faith has been the favored mission of the Jesus Youth movement and this conference would enable the participants to know more and re-discover their Faith. Around 800 to 1000 Jesus Youth from across Karnataka are expected to participate in this conference.

It is with much thirst and dreams for the Lord that we host this program in Bangalore. The program is organized in three streams – for youth in English, for youth in Kannada and for families. We have even organized a Kids Care centre to take care of the children during the Conference days.

With great happiness, we invite you all to come and be a part of this Conference and share with us the blessings from above.

For more details on registration, please contact:

John Joseph (+91-9980092105)

Karnataka Faith Conference

Overview of Second Vatican Council - Part 3

CHANGES

What were some of the changes that the Council brought about? Many of our attitudes, many of the things that today we take for granted, came about as a consequence of Vatican 2. There are far, far too many things that could be mentioned – and here are just a few.

 

1. The Church itself - Vatican 2 redefined, re-imaged the Church

Since the break-up of Christendom at the time of the Reformation ( 400 years earlier ) the Catholic Church had become very inward looking, had become reactionary and had withdrawn itself from the world. It had seen itself, referred to itself, as a ‘perfect society’. In reacting to what had happened at the Reformation, it had become a fortress Church – withdrawn, pulled up draw bridges, isolated.

The Council pushed the Church back into the world. It used ancient biblical images to redefine the Church – People of God, the Body of Christ, the Edifice of God, the sheepfold, the community of believers. Instead of portraying the Church as a perfect society, it redefined the Church as a community of those believers who are on a pilgrimage, sharing ‘the joys, the hopes and the anxieties’ of humankind.

The Council said that the Church was the People of God – it was a community of all the baptised, both laity and their pastors. “The Church is a priestly people, it is like a pilgrim in a foreign land, and it presses forward amid the persecutions of the world, announcing the cross and death of the Lord until he comes.”

 

2. Laity

If you re-image an organisation – you end up redefining those who make up the organisation. So we saw in Vatican 2 a new place for the laity. The Church was to be less clerical. All are equal members by Christian Baptism. Roles may differ, but Baptism is the key sacrament and makes all of us members of the Church. “All are called to be holy.” Prior to the Council if you wanted to be holy you left the world, you became a priest or entered a religious order. All can be holy in the world.

The role of women has changed. They are regarded as equal with men in the lay state. Women today however challenge the Church towards continuing progress and development. We have seen much more lay involvement in the Church. The laity are key to the Church’s mission, because they live in the heart of the modern world and work in its engine rooms. 99% of the Church is made up of lay people.

Since the Council there is a huge increase in ministries in the Church. Council reminded us that ministry is rooted in Baptism not Holy Orders. Today the laity is absolutely vital to every enterprise of the Church.

 

3. Liturgy

Perhaps the most obvious change of all came about in regard to the way in which the Church goes about worship. Prior to the Council, most saw the liturgy as the domain of the clergy or the priest. Over time, the liturgy had become clericalised. The laity had become passive spectators saying their prayers and devotions. The Council decreed in that famous text, that in regard to its worship, the Church desired nothing less ‘than the full, active and conscious participation of the faithful’. The Council ordered a complete revision of the way that all of the sacraments were celebrated. As a consequence – in 1970 – we finally got a whole new way of celebrating the Eucharist.

We can recall how altars were turned to face the people, and Latin was replaced with local language. At the time many thought that these were brand new ideas. They weren’t new at all. The Church was just going back to an earlier tradition of how it conducted the liturgy. Our liturgy today is a lot less clerical, for we now understand that liturgy is essentially the work of the people.

 

4. Ecumenism

One area in which the Council brought about great change was in its understanding and relationship with other Churches. Prior to the Council it was hoped that Protestants would return to the ‘one, true Church’ and that the Orthodox schism would end. In the decades before the Council, Protestants had become more and more involved in what had come to be called the ‘Ecumenical Movement’. The World Council of Churches had been founded and there had been many mergers of churches. All of these moves expressed a hope for unity among the Christian Churches. But the Roman Catholic Church remained aloof from all of this.

And then came Pope John who called his Ecumenical Council. He immediately set about inviting the separated communities to send delegations. He showed how important they were by insisting that they be seated in the front of St Peter’s just across the aisle from the patriarchs and cardinals. Until Vatican 2, we as Catholics didn’t recognise the other Christian Churches. We saw them as heretics and schismatics. At Vatican 2 we recognised the validity of their Baptism and the Council demanded that we look upon these communities as ecclesial, and that the members of these churches were indeed ‘our brothers and sisters in Christ’. A revolution!

When Pope Paul VI took over the Council after John’s death, he spent a great deal of time in his opening speech at the Council’s second session on the subject of Christian unity. Christ willed and desired that his Church be one. The ecumenical movement and the desire for Christian unity continue to our own time. It is a work in progress. We must, as Christians, pray and work that all who believe in Jesus may be one.

Material compiled by Monsignor Paul Farmer of the Auckland Diocese

Overview of Second Vatican Council - Part 2

THE COUNCIL BEGINS

The following is an excerpt from an author giving an account of the Council’s grand opening ceremony in Rome: Pope John was 81 years of age when, on a marvellous October morning in 1962, he was carried on his sedia gestatoria into St Peter’s. His face was wet with tears. Never had the papacy been so high in public esteem. If all popes were like him, it was said, everyone would be lining up to be a Catholic. He personified the phrase of Horace, ‘Nothing prevents one from telling the truth with a smile on one’s face.’ The Council showed that even a pope was prepared to listen and learn.

In his opening address, he made it plain that the Church was not to heed the prophets of doom. The Church had to update herself radically, and without fear. The cold war of the churches, as far as Rome was concerned was over. There were to be no anathemas; instead, a return to the Gospel of the Master, Jesus Christ. The presence of non-Catholic observers in the aula was a sign of the Church’s change of heart.

The historian McBrien says of Pope John. ‘In a period of less than 5 years he almost single-handedly transformed the Catholic Church from a clericalistic, monarchical, unecumenical and theologically rigid body to a community of radical equality in Christ – laity, religious and clergy alike, open to dialogue and collaboration with other Christian and non-Christian communities with non-believers, and with the world at large.’

And there’s another beautiful story told of this ever-so-human pope. It’s a story that you still hear in Rome and that you read over and over in any writing about this man. It goes, that on the night of October 11, 1962, the night of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, something like half a million people gathered in St Peter’s Square below the Pope’s bedroom window. The crowd chanted and sang. The aim was to bring Pope John to his window. And on the night of the greatest day of his life, he rewarded their singing and chanting by appearing at his window. He called out to them, “Children, I hear your voices,” and then he went on to explain to this mixed gathering his hopes for the Council. One historian I read says that the event was very well recorded in the Roman papers the next day and from that moment the skeptical Romans were totally converted to his Council. When he finished his explanation of the Council, he said to the crowd. “Now go back home, and give your little children a kiss – and tell them it’s from Pope John.” As one commentator put it: “You could almost touch the emotion. The ‘patriarch’ gave and generated love with all his being.”

At the time of its opening session, Pope John was a sick man, with cancer. He died on 3rd June the following year, as a never-before worldwide audience prayed and journeyed with him in his final days. He had become universally loved like no pope before him.

Pope Paul VI

He was succeeded by that most Catholic of popes, Paul VI, who was totally committed to the vision of his predecessor. For the next three years he led the Council to its climax and conclusion in December 1965.

To be continued.......

Material compiled by Monsignor Paul Farmer of the Auckland Diocese

Overview of Second Vatican Council - Part 1

On 11 October 2012 – our Church celebrated the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. It would be a great pity if such an anniversary were to pass us by without comment or reflection on why the Council was convened, and what it achieved.
 
The Second Vatican Council was a huge event in Catholic life. Many have referred to it over the decades as a tsunami. It certainly was, in the sense that it changed and altered Catholic life in a dramatic way.

Pope John XXIII (now Blessed John XXIII) the initiator of the Council, preferred to call the Council “a new Pentecost”. It was his dearest hope that the Council would be a new springtime in the life of the Church. The Council was presided over by two outstanding Church leaders- Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI. John had been pope for less than ninety days when, even to the surprise of those closest to him, he called the Church into Council. The last General Council of the Church had been held in 1870. Pope John realised that the world of the sixties was indeed a very different world.
Let us dwell for a few moments on Pope John because he was by all accounts an extraordinary person. John XIII enjoyed a short pontificate, and his decision to call a Council was responsible for initiating a period of change in our Church that continues to this day.

Whatever author you read in regard to Pope John, he was obviously a man who trusted deeply in God. He was a charismatic man, a man of simplicity and humour and shrewd wisdom. His only wish was to draw people to God. He continually reached out to all – both those within the Church and beyond, with a message of peace, renewal and reconciliation. His vision was to bring the Church back to the gospel of Jesus Christ As one author puts it … “he was that rare phenomenon; a charistmatic Christian in a hierarchical position.” What he did, was what he was! John XXIII knew the inevitability of change & development. He was an historian by training, and history had taught him - as it can teach us - that nothing is unalterable. Pope John’s profound faith in God, his great love for the Church and for all humanity, together with his historical perspective, led him to change the course of the Catholic Church irreversibly. Good Pope John - as he was affectionately known and is still called - desired that his Council would have wide aspirations and that it would be pastoral. It would not be a Council that condemned. John saw himself essentially as a pastor, as a shepherd, who wanted to bring everyone with his embrace.

To be continued.......

Material compiled by Monsignor Paul Farmer of the Auckland Diocese