By Joe Burns, Commission Member
It seems like there are not so many people who are labelled as ‘prophets’ in our times. That was one of the reasons why we decided to organise a Day of Reflection to explore what the prophets in Scripture were all about and where we see prophets in our own time. In times of complexity, confusion, false news, collusion, manipulation and oppression we need those in our midst who see clearly, who still believe it is possible to touch what is real and true, and who can share this vision of hope in the midst of the surrounding fog.
For this day we made our first visit to St Robert’s parish in Harrogate and were made very welcome in their lovely parish rooms by the parish priest, Fr Simon Bradbury.
The day was led by David McLoughlin, Emeritus Fellow of Christian Theology at Newman University. He gave three talks, and these were interspersed with plenty of time for comments and questions, as well as liturgy segments that were integrated across the day.
David’s approach to his talks was to adopt the YCW approach: See, Judge, Act. I would at this point try and summarise the main points that David made but he very kindly provided the full texts of his talks and has given permission for the Commission to publish these as some short pamphlets. You can use the buttons below to download the texts of the talks.
The 3 talks were also recorded, and we hope to make these available as podcasts soon (just as soon as we have worked out how to do it!).
The First talk was entitled “Seeing with Prophetic Imagination”.
The second talk was entitled “From Seeing to Judging: Renewing the Prophetic Imagination.
The third talk was entitled “Acting out of Prophetic Imagination”