Fr Jim Cogley
Many today suffer from the disease of invisibility. As community breaks down there is less sense of belonging and being known. So we go into a supermarket and the cashier is engaged in animated conversation with her colleague at the next till about her love life. There is a forced interlude while the items are being checked but you know it is purely transactional and not remotely personal. In fact the goods are related to more than you are. Then banks have become utterly impersonal where most business is either done on line or at a machine. The opportunity of meeting a friendly face is quite remote as staff are sacrificed on the altar of profit. Sad to say the same thing happens even in Church; the one place where the very opposite should be happening. In fact the big reason for a church even to exist is to promote a sense of belonging. Yet people still come anonymous and leave anonymous to the extent that when they stop coming their absence is not even noticed. This is where the mentality of ‘getting Mass’ is so fundamentally flawed because it often means not getting what it is all about.