All major religions believe that the first thing we need to affirm about God is that God is ineffable, beyond all human imagination and language. Everything we think and say about God reveals some truth, but, this side of eternity, never the complete truth. No dogma and no religion provides an adequate expression of God.
The year I was ordained, they put me into a parish in North London. I was young, keen and enthusiastic, so they thought they had better put me somewhere safe, where I couldn’t do too much damage.
Given the media attention around the Catholic Church’s latest synod on the family, with its rumours of schism, plots, and the self-outing of a gay Vatican priest with his partner, one might think that the whole event was scripted by Umberto Echo or Dan Brown. But its effects, which reinforce much of the Church’s teaching on the family, may prove long-lasting.
We share the Holy Father’s concerns for the world and for the spread of the Gospel. Each month he entrusts his concerns to the Apostleship of Prayer, the Pope’s Global Prayer Network, and asks us to invite all people of good will to pray with and about these intentions.
