STORY - "Helping Communities to Pray "

“What is really important is that we help this community to pray.”

“Liturgy is our identity, it’s the sign of who we are, of the various aspects of our being, when we come together as church to celebrate on Sunday.”

It is liturgy that is the passion of Sr Carmel Pilcher RSJ, a “brown Josephite” and liturgical consultant who joined the diocesan community earlier this year. While Carmel brings a wealth of experience in education and pastoral support to her role, she knew early in her ministry that liturgy had a special attraction, so she finds her current role very satisfying.

A highlight of her career was co-ordinating the papal ceremonies for the beatification of Mary MacKillop in Sydney in 1995. While that was an enormous challenge with a gratifying outcome, it is day to day liturgy that will be her main concern in Maitland-Newcastle.

She has long experience in the Archdiocese of Sydney and realises that most liturgical issues – and she believes that liturgy deserves a place at every diocesan conversation - are not confined to a particular parish or diocese. Also, “Liturgy can often be the peg people hang their frustrations on and a cover for other issues.”

Carmel’s arrival is timely given that, like most dioceses, decisions are being made here about the most effective ways of ministering, utilising the skills of pastors and parishioners and the financial and physical resources available. At times, those decisions, and their consequences, are painful.

“Most people hate change. Most people, however, will accept change if they’re formed to know why, and if a process is undertaken which includes formation and communication, major divisions are less likely.”

For example, when a decision to close a Mass centre is deemed necessary, Carmel feels that a community needs twelve months to adjust and to grieve. “People can’t deal with that overnight. Forward planning’s vital, so they can work through all that they need to work through and gradually go from that community and form a new community.

“Closing a church is a death, because closing a church is dissolving a parish community, and closing a building where a lot of people have sacred, treasured memories…”

Carmel also advocates that people are helped to understand when, for example, it’s appropriate to gather for Liturgies of the Word and when they need to move towards another parish community. The practical question of access to other churches needs consideration, and where this is difficult, perhaps for senior worshippers, the community is challenged to act.

“We seem to have reached a situation where there’s very little life, apart from Sunday Mass, for the average Catholic and that’s the source of our problem. There isn’t always a strong communal sense.”

Carmel is concerned that “People see going to Mass on Sunday as ‘it’.” Of course, a significant majority of baptised Catholics don’t see going to Mass on Sundays as important at all, and it is her contention that “the biggest reason people don’t go to Mass on Sunday is the quality of our liturgy. If we had liturgy that spoke to people’s daily experience, there would be many more taking the time to be there.”

Carmel does not sheet home this awesome responsibility to priests alone, for every baptised person is equally called to share this task. In fact, she sees as one of her main tasks the support of the clergy. “This can only happen with a strong liturgy team that prepares liturgy to reflect the life of the local community. While the details are important, the rich use of symbol and the interplay between word and ritual should make clear connections with my life experience, so that I walk away being challenged to live the justice to which the gospels call me.”

Central to Carmel’s Josephite charism is Mary MacKillop’s axiom: “Never see a need without trying to do something about it.” Her mission in our diocese is not a small one, but she has been supported by our own “black” Josephite Sisters. She grew up in a strong Josephite community in Adelaide; “I was baptised in the church where Mary MacKillop hid when she was excommunicated; the schools I attended were founded by Mary MacKillop; my mother’s godmother met Mary MacKillop; I can no more imagine not being Josephite than not being a member of my family.”

The needs that Carmel is addressing here are significant and central to our life as a diocesan community, and her record indicates she will bring great energy and commitment to that mission.

Tracey Edstein

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