Newsletter of Father Peter Fitzgibbon – August 2020
Introducing an Online Ministry
In January 2019 Father Peter Fitzgibbon retired from active parish ministry. The first few months saw him setting up home and getting used to a new life. He began to learn again in the raw what it is just to be a priest. There were things from time to time he could as a priest do, but he began to feel the need for a re-vision, a new discernment. He shared thoughts with some friends. Was there a new opening for him? A specific new, ongoing, and useful activity, he asked.
Towards 2020 he thought of using his road-sense and his principal material asset, a Honda HR-V, to travel from home to help weekends or for short periods in parishes beyond the special local parish and town in which he was then based. A fellow priest invited him over on supply, but this was blocked by a passing illness, benign but enough to stop him that weekend. So, maybe there was something else? The thought arose to try to reach people and places across the world wide web.
That discernment? What had he to share? What values? Where his heart? A personal testimony surfaced, a summary of what he feels and believes. As he wrote at that time:
About me – I see advantage and great value in
-
- facing up to issues raised in an often-hostile world
- devotional relationships with God
- spiritualities true and proven
- abiding in churches that mentor and baptise
- clergy working together as groups loyal to Christ
- ordained and non-ordained ministries in collaboration
- reading and praying the Word of God
- proclaiming the Word of God
- doing liturgy correctly to support faith & good works
- domestic churches
Father Peter’s Invite: I have lived and worked in parishes all these years and to one of them I returned to belong in the latter years of my journey. A journey now through new times and in circumstances so different. A website could even be like A New Parish. Hence its web title A New Parish.
During our Covid 19 lockdown the bullet pointed topics above morphed into essays that became posts on the website. From where I am in catholic life, I pray for you, for your household, and for your parish – if you have one. Wherever you are, welcome to this online pastoral outreach.
Please pray for this venture, visit it online, use the contact form bringing your comments to my email inbox. Also, there is a space on each page where you may place your email address and click the subscribe button underneath to receive automatic notifications of new posts and monthly newsletters.
