BANGALORE, India – On December 17, 2011 P. Dennis J. Murphy celebrated the 60th anniversary of his priestly ordination. At 11 am, he presided over the Eucharistic celebration, in which many MSC priests and a couple of guest priests were concelebrants. His homily centered around philosophical, theological and spiritual experiences - all people have their existence in God and no one is excluded. He emphasized on his faithfulness to his congregation – the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, his priesthood and the Catholic Church. As he was a student for 7 years and Assistant General for two terms from 1981 to 1993 in Rome and in India for 17 years since 1994, he felt being a part of these countries. He added that one has to be born into that culture so as to belong to that culture and he also admitted the fact that pain is always a part of being a missionary. He thanked God for the gift of his priesthood, quoting Psalm 107.

Parishioners from the Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Church and the scholastics brought festivity to this special occasion. P. John Chinnappan presented a short history of P. Dennis at the beginning of the Eucharistic celebration. P. Joseph Christy, the Superior of the Indian Union, expressed his gratitude to P. Dennis for his patience, humility, example and his tireless service to the Congregation and the Union of India. P. Dennis Murphy acknowledged the preparations for the jubilee, undertaken by the MSC confreres: P. Charles, the parish priest of the Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Church, P. Syam Kumar and P. Richard.

P. Dennis was ordained to the priesthood on December 22, 1951. He secured a licentiate from the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. He taught Sacred Scripture at the scholasticate seminary and he was made Rector at St. Paul’s National Seminary in Kensington, Australia. He was appointed the Provincial Superior of the Australian Province in 1975 for six years. P. Dennis has also made a significant contribution to spiritual, Biblical and MSC writing. His works are enumerated here: His Servant the Prophets (1965), The Apostle of Corinth (1966), The Challenge to Hope (1980), The Heart of Our Mission (1981), Thy Kingdom Come, The Heart of World Incarnate (2003), Two Editions of the Church and Bible, (Ist edition 2000, IInd edition 2007), The Heart of the Word Incarnate (coming soon) and 25 years of MSC in India (coming soon).

Cause of Beatification of God's Servant, Jules Chevalier

Preliminary Meeting for the Diocesan Action

9th November 2011-12-12

During the morning and afternoon, Fathers Jean Jules CHASSEM, Postulator, Raymond DOSSMANN and Pierre BALLY, Vice Postulators, prepared for the meeting with the members of the Diocesan Tribunal of Bourges’ Diocese, where God’s Servant, Jules Chevalier, had passed away.

For a better understanding of what has been done, let us sum up what has already taken place:

- The contact with Bourges’ Archbishop, Bishop Hubert BARBIER, started in December 2002, and went on from time to time over the following years. Among other things, Archbishop BARBIER had asked the metropolitan Archbishop of Tours, of which the Diocese of Bourges is a part of, the opinion of the bishops of this Ecclesiastical Province about the relevance to launch this cause. A unanimous, favourable and motivated opinion was given on the 19th October 2005 – Bishop BARBIER nominated the two theologians censors required to examine the writings of and about God’s Servant. Both started their work to be able to give their report to the Bishop of Bourges.

- 11th September 2007: end of the Episcopate of Bishop Hubert BARBIER in Bourges.
- 14th October 2007: Bishop Armand MAILLARD was installed at Bourges.

It did not take long before the process started again. And following the promulgation by Bishop MAILLARD, on the occasion of the National Pilgrimage of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, on the 3rd September 2011, of the “Nihil Obstat” of the Holy See for the cause of Beatification and Canonisation of God’s Servant, Bourges’ Archbishop nominated the members for the diocesan enquiry for the Cause’s Instruction: The Episcopal Delegate, the Justice Promoter, the Notary and his assistant, that is two priests and two lay persons, the four of them from the Bourges Diocese, and the Bishop in person presiding over both the opening and closing of the Inquiry.

- The Postulator and the Vice Postulators then prepared the agenda for the meeting:
1) Judicial Dispositions concerning the mission of the two Theological Censors
2) Judicial Dispositions concerning the Officials of the Inquiry in general and in particular.
3) Proposed date and venue for the opening Session of the Inquiry.
4) Make known to the members of the Inquiry that all expenses covering travel, time spent, stationary and means of communication are covered by the General Superior of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart.
5) Handing over to every member of the Inquiry the “Biographic profile of God’s Servant” (13x pages), note of three pages about “the life of Father Chevalier – 1824 – 1907”, a copy of the Annals of October 2007 (centenary of the Death of Fr Jules Chevalier) and the Book of Fr. Jean Tostain “Le père Chevalier”.

This preliminary meeting, held on Friday 9th December 2011, at 16.30, at the Archbishop of Bourges Headquarters, took place in a beautiful atmosphere of ecclesial Brotherhood. Present were the following persons: Archbishop Armand MAILLARD, Archbishop of Bourges, the Delegated Judge, the Justice Promoter, the Notaries and the three Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. Thank you to Archbishop MAILLARD for the welcome of the three Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, the brief presentation of the participants, the sharing about the role of each one, about each point of the agenda, and what to do next. The meeting concluded at 18.15.

Each of the Faithful is invited to pray so that the Church can propose, as an example to the Universal Church, this missionary with a burning heart, witness of God’s Love, Fr. Jules CHEVALIER.

L’équipe des postulateurs Traduit du français à l’anglais par le Père Dominic Pradiers, msc.

December 8, 2011

Dear confreres around the world,

Greetings and best wishes to all of you on the occasion of the 157th anniversary of the founding of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. May the grace given to Jules Chevalier and Sebastian Maugenest continue to be lived and shared by all who have come to be a part of the Family born on December 8, 1854.

I am writing this one month after the closing of our 24th General Chapter. I accepted a second term of office and ask for the prayer and support of each of you to help me complete it. I realize that given my age I will have to rely more than ever on the members of the General Council and other confreres to face the challenges that lie ahead.

The new Council has four members. Fr. Rafael Rodríguez, who is in the last months of his second term as Provincial in the Dominican Republic, is the first Councilor. Fr. F. X. Wahyudi, whom you all know from the previous Council, is the second. Fr. Carl Tranter, a native of England and recently named Deputy Provincial in Ireland, has been a part of the Cordate community in Birmingham since its beginning. Fr. Chris McPhee of Australia has been the director of novices there for the past five years. Together, the members of the new team bring a wealth of experience and knowledge to the General Administration. I am most grateful to them and to their Provinces for their availability and generosity.

By the time you read this you will have already received a copy of the Chapter’s decisions and the booklet with the Chapter’s acts and main documents will follow shortly. The new General Administration will be in place by the end of January 2012 and we will begin work on the implementation of the Chapter’s decisions and recommendations. These cover a number of topics: the importance of communal discernment, obedience and mission, restructuring, JPIC, media and communication, MSC Brothers, the laity, formation, international community and ministry, our commitment to combat sexual misconduct.

During the coming year we will be working with the Provincial administrations and the entire Congregation to make all these recommendations a reality. In this letter I will mention only the first and certainly the most important of these because it encourages the process we should be using in all of our important decisions: communal discernment.

As a Congregation, we have a long history of communal discernment when making major decisions. If we go back to early December, 1854, we find Chevalier and Maugenest struggling to know what God wanted by praying a novena together and by sharing with each other and with their parish priest. Our MSC Family was born in a process of discernment.

Here is the text of the first Chapter decision:The Chapter recommends that Communal Discernment be used as a process for reflection and making important decisions within the Congregation so that we may discern the Will of God and be more obedient and responsive to the urgings of the Spirit and the cries of the people and societies of our day. We ask the General Administration to prepare material to assist us develop this practice.

As one of our first priorities, the General Council will be working on this in February. At this time I would like to share some of my personal experience with discernment at the Chapter. This was my eighth consecutive general chapter so I feel authorized to make some comparisons! I was usually there as secretary or moderator but I was always very present to the interaction and the collaboration of the members from so many different countries and cultures. In my experience all of them were moments of grace for me and, I hope, for the Congregation.

The 2011 Chapter, however, was different. Almost everyone remarked how there was more communication and unity. More than one said that the Chapter had given him the experience of really belonging to a world-wide religious Congregation. I can confirm this. Confreres from Latin America were no longer a “group apart.” They seemed to be fully integrated into the spirit and work of the Chapter. The same was true for confreres from the different cultures of APIA and for those of us from the older Provinces. I thank God for this great grace. It was what Fr. Chevalier so often prayed for.

What brought this about? There were certainly many factors. Important among them the fact that many of our younger confreres have begun to take seriously the often-repeated Chapter recommendation to learn a second international language. More people were able to communicate without a translator! The presence of many young confreres, most of them in their first experience of an international Congregational meeting, was also a powerful element and gave a different face to the MSC congregation – a face much younger than many of us would have imagined.

I believe that what really made the difference was the process of communal discernment that the Chapter tried to follow. It was a very simple process. As we approached each new topic we took time for personal prayer and for sharing that prayer in small groups before we began to discuss the “business” of the topic. This process helped develop a strong bond between the members of each group and put our “work” in an entirely different perspective. When we all listen to God in prayer (especially using the same Bible text or passage from Fr. Chevalier or our Constitutions) and then listen to the hearts of others who have done the same, it is much easier to hear God’s voice.

Because of this experience, the Chapter recommends that we do this in all our local community meetings, in meetings of Provincial Chapters, Assemblies and Councils and on the General level. The General Council will be sending you materials in the future but even now, we can begin to operate in this way. With discernment, our meetings are much less like political assemblies and much more like the meetings of the early Christians in the Acts of the Apostles.

I take this opportunity to ask you to pray for the General Chapter of the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart which begins on November 15 in the Philippines and ends in early December. May their experience of chapter be filled with the Spirit and God’s grace.

I wish you all a BLESSED CHRISTMAS and a NEW YEAR 2012 of peace and joy!

Mark McDonald, MSC

Superior General

Msgr. Jaap Duivenvoorde msc, Emeritus Archbishop of Merauke, Papua, was born on the 15th of November, 1928 and entered eternal life on the 16th of November, 2011. He made his first vows in the Congregation of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart on the 21st September, 1949 and was ordained on the 5th September, 1954. As a young priest he worked in Papua in the minor seminary, in the school office and as secretary to the Bishop. He was consecrated Bishop on the 1st of October, 1972 succeeding Msgr. Tillmans. After 33 years in Papua he returned to the Netherlands. His funeral service was held on the 21st of November, 2011 in Tilburg. May he rest in peace.