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Mary for the Love and Glory of God, a collection of ecumenical essays by scholars representing various Christian denominations that were presented at the International Congress of the ESBVM in Pittsburgh, PA, USA, in 2008, has recently been published in the United States by ESBVM USA through AuthorHouse. The contributors to this book focus their attention on Mary, the Mother of Christ, the biblical disciple whose life brings us to the love and glory of God. Contributing authors are Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant, and include: Very Rev. John Behr, Dean of Vladimir’s Seminary in New York; Dr. Robert L. Fastiggi, Professor of Sacred Theology at Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit; Sr. Nonna Verna Harrison, an Eastern Orthodox nun and specialist in Patristics and Orthodox Theology; Dr. Maura Hearden, a Roman Catholic scholar and professor at DeSales University in PA; Rev. Jennifer Mary Kimball, pastor of the First Congregational Church UCC in Walton, NY; Dr. Virginia M. Kimball, an Eastern Orthodox theologian and president of the ESBVM USA; Rev. Dr. Donald Charles Lacy, United Methodist Pastor and well-known ecumenical author and lecturer; Sr. Barbara Jean Mihalchick OSBM, a Byzantine Catholic sister and vocation director for the Sisters of the Order of St. Basil in Uniontown, PA; Sr. Mary Catherine Nolan, a Roman Catholic Dominican sister and Marian theologian; Rev. Dr. Edward J. Ondrako, OFM Conv, scholar in residence at the Franciscan International Study Center in Canterbury, Kent, England; and Rev. Dr. Paul Snowden Russell III, an Anglican priest, noted Syriac scholar, and Dean of the St. Joseph of Arimathea Anglican Theological College, in Berkeley, CA.

In the United States, Mary for the Love and Glory of God is available for $25 through AuthorHouse at www.authorhouse.com, as well as other online booksellers.

The book is easily available to those living in the United Kingdom because the publisher, AuthorHouse, has a location in England. This means that there are no overseas shipping costs. Go to www.authorhouse.co.uk to order. On the website go to BOOKSHOP and search at the top of the screen by title, or author, or ISBN 978-1-4567-5667-3. The cost is £15.95.

Mary for the Love and Glory of God has received good reviews from readers in the U.S.  We would welcome reviews from ESBVM members in the UK on this website under COMMENTS! 

ESBVM USA held a meeting in October 2011 at Andover Newton Theological School in Newton Centre, Massachusetts. The program included presentations by Dr. Christopher Carr, Roman Catholic Theologian who presented on “Virgin Mary, the Paradigm of Justice”; Most Rev. Leonard Faris, Antiochian priest from St. George Church in Lowell, MA, who spoke on “Mary in the Orthodox Tradition”; and a special presentation by Shobha Ramapriya, a Hindu educator who spoke on the role of women in Hinduism and Hindu understanding of the Virgin Mary.

An interesting meeting is planned for May, 2012, in Washigton, DC. A proposed panel discussion betwen representatives of various Christian traditions – either teaching in or associated with seminaries, or involved in ecumenical work – who will share: (1) their own tradition’s understanding of Mary, the mother of Christ; (2) whether Marian Theology is at all pertinent to seminary or catechetical formation in their tradition; (3) and how Marian devotion/ veneration / or consideration of the Communion of Saints is held in their tradition. The meeting will also include an open discussion by audience members.
More information about the May 2012 meeting will be posted soon on this website. Meetings are usually held the second Saturday in May and October, 9 am to 4 pm. Attendance at the meeting is free. A light lunch is served and donations are welcome.

An obituary of Joe Farrelly written by Amanda C. Dickie, Honorary Press Secretary of ESBVM, has appeared here on the Independent Catholic News web site.

My entry to Chichester Theological College in 1979 to train for the priesthood brought me into contact for the first time with Canon Roger Greenacre. He had been brought to Chichester Cathedral as Canon Residentiary and Chancellor from the chaplaincy of St George’s in Paris in 1975 by Bishop Eric Kemp, an act which must have been one of his first strategic appointments as he had himself only been appointed to the diocese in 1974. Roger lectured in the Theological College from 1975 until 1989, principally, as I recall, in Church History, Liturgy, and the Sacrament of Penance. When almost out of his hearing, we referred to him as Père Roger or, more frivolously, as Gigi, such was our appraisal of him as affecting to be more French than English. How ungenerous we were in our humour! There was indeed French blood in him, but there was also a strong appreciation of France and its relationship with the English world, as well as a desire to be a bridge in his teaching and in his refined ecumenism between the two ecclesiastical cultures represented, French Catholic and Anglican. He himself contributed to this dialogue through membership of the English Anglican-Roman Catholic Committee. His The Catholic Church in France: an Introduction (1996) told the French Church’s story, presenting its character and the history of its relations with the Church of England to Anglican readers.

He was a post-Vatican II ecumenist, ready always as an Anglican to receive what was profitable from the spirit of the Council and to interpret back a broadening and more catholic and sacramental Anglicanism to which he was deeply committed. ARCIC was food and drink to him and he devoted many of his energies to promoting the ecumenical vision of Anglicanism “united but not absorbed” with Rome. Such an inspiration led him eventually to become an oblate of the Benedictine Abbey of Notre Dame du Bec in 1982, the fulfilment of a journey and a sympathy which had begun with his first visit there in 1952.

What began as the relationship between a student and his teacher in 1979 became, over the years, a friendship between colleagues. I never knew him well, I must admit, but we reached a gentle understanding. I returned to the diocese of Chichester in 1986 and held various posts thereafter, but I found myself gradually working more closely with Roger in the ecumenical field on two fronts: first, as one of a team of three diocesan Ecumenical Officers in which Roger had taken the lead as Diocesan Ecumenical Officer from 1975; and, secondly, through my membership of the Ecumenical Society of the Blessed Virgin Mary, of which Roger had himself been a member and luminary for many years, serving with distinction on its Council to which he brought theological rigour tempered by real sensitivity as well as characteristic wit. My own interest and involvement with the Society had only just been formed at that time, having been encouraged in it by Geoffrey and Jill Pinnock whilst in my second curacy in Oxford where they were parishioners. I recall a trip south to Chichester with me as driver and Geoffrey and Jill as passengers, the purpose of which was to renew acquaintance with Roger and spend time with him in his delightful home in Vicar’s Close, off Canon Lane, in the precincts of the Cathedral, talking ESBVM.

Arriving in the diocese of Chichester in the autumn of 1986 meant that I was able to be on the spot for the Seventh International Congress of the ESBVM (September 1986) which was being held at Bishop Otter College in Chichester. We were fortunate to be so near to the Cathedral and to be able to have Arundel Cathedral as a sister venue. I found myself amongst the great and the good of British ecumenism: Bishop Eric Kemp of Chichester was one of the Society’s Executive Co-Chairman (with established ecumenical credentials, having been a member of both the Anglican-Methodist Conversations and the Preparatory Commission of ARCIC I), and Cormac Murphy-O’Connor was Bishop of Arundel and Brighton and Co-Chairman of ARCIC II. Needless to say, Roger, a Residentiary Canon, was in the thick of it as he was Chairman of the West Sussex ESBVM (in those days one of the most active of the Society’s branches), and was supported – and regularly hounded – by the indefatigable Molly Corbally who was Branch Secretary and logistical animatrice of the Congress. It was a wonderful occasion and the papers of the Chichester Congress, Mary and the Churches (edited by Dom Alberic Stacpoole, 1987) testify to the breadth of intellectual interest the ESBVM stimulated internationally twenty-five years ago. Roger himself, an ESBVM Council member, was a regular contributor to such gatherings. A paper of his worth revisiting is one he delivered at the Conference at Dromantine College, Newry, in October 1995, and one which well exemplifies both his historical ecumenical interest and the range of his scholarship, The Malines Conversations: a significant milestone in the history of Anglican-Roman Catholic Dialogue in Mary is for Everyone (edited by William McLoughlin OSM and Jill Pinnock, 1997).

Having reached his seventieth year, Roger retired from Chichester Cathedral in 2000. He was awarded a Lambeth Doctorate of Divinity by the Archbishop of Canterbury the following year in recognition of his extensive and scholarly contribution to ecumenism. Not one to be put out to grass, Roger immediately took up a retirement post as chaplain to St Michael’s, Beaulieu-sur-Mer on the French Riviera. How typical of Roger to find himself such an agreeable posting! Although this time was often one of ill health for him, he certainly felt that he still had a pastoral role to play amongst the English community there as well as continuing to write and to study. He returned to England in 2010 and spent his last year at the London Charterhouse.

Two last occasions come to mind. The first was the celebration of his 50th anniversary of ordination as a priest in Chichester Cathedral in September 2005 at which Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran preached – “surely the first curial cardinal to fly to England from the Vatican to preach at a celebration of Anglican priestly ministry?” comments Dr Colin Podmore, Roger’s literary executor, in another appreciation elsewhere. In this he goes on to remind us of a warm personal greeting from the Archbishop of Canterbury read out at that singular occasion in which he praised Roger as representing “a particular style of Catholic Anglicanism that is deeply rooted in liturgy and personal prayer, critical and generous all at once” (New Directions, September 2011, p.14). The second occasion (and, for my wife and me, the last sight of Roger before he was physically diminished by terminal illness) was Bishop Eric Kemp’s Funeral Mass in Chichester Cathedral in December 2009. Here Roger and others kept vigil before Bishop Eric’s body as it lay before the Shrine of St Richard, a typically prayerful and generous act from one who owed so many debts to his former Father in God, and of whom Roger had been a devoted and loyal supporter through many ups and downs in Anglican Church life.

Roger’s memory was honoured at a Memorial Requiem in Chichester Cathedral on 23rd September at 11.30 am. May the Blessed Virgin Mary, whom Roger honoured in his life and in his work for the unity of her Son’s followers, pray for him as he enters into the peace of God’s saints.

Joe Farrelly had the gift of making amazing warmth and generosity seem quite natural, particularly in ecumenism. I joined the ESBVM about 22 years ago, by word of a friend and invitation from Joe. The same natural warmth and inclusion at its heart held me in the Society at times when it was not quite so easy for one of the first ordained Anglican women. I have always felt enormous gratitude to Joe for this.

Joe had a clear grasp of matters great and small. I remember his talking about the need to be civil to telephoning cold-callers, who are ‘only doing a job’. His perceptiveness was always accompanied by a strong humanity, in turn inspired by deep devotion. He was a Chaucerian ‘verray parfit gentil knyght’.

Mariological Society of America Call for Papers for the 2012 Conference
May 23-26, 2012 – Mt. Angel Abbey Retreat House – St. Benedict, Oregon

The Mariological Society of America invites proposals for its May 23-26, 2012 conference in St. Benedict, Oregon on Marian doctrine and devotion in the USA and Canada since 1900. Proposals can cover ideas, movements, persons, organizations and places from the viewpoint of systematic theology, art, Scripture, popular religiosity, ecclesiastical and/or cultural history. Some possible topics might include:

- The Mariology and Marian devotional life of the Catholic Church in the United States and Canada since 1900.

The Marian charisms of particular religious congregations and secular institutes (e.g. The Society of Mary, Sister Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Congregation of Holy Cross, the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Schönstatt Movement, the Claretians, the Montfort Fathers) and their contributions to Catholic life in the USA and Canada since 1900.

- The Marian dimensions of various ethnic groups in the USA and Canada since 1900 (e.g. Hispanics, Asians, French Canadians, Germans, Irish, Poles, African-Americans, Native Americans and Italians).

- The Mariology and/or Marian devotion in the life and preaching/ teaching of notable Catholic figures in the USA and Canada since 1900 – especially canonized Saints, those recognized as “Blessed” and those whose causes for
beatification have been introduced (e.g. Patrick Peyton, C.S.C., Bishop Fulton J. Sheen).

- Marian shrines and basilicas in the USA and Canada (e.g the Spanish Missions, Cap de la Madeleine, Sainte Anne de Beaupre, the Basilica of the Assumption in Baltimore, the shrine of Our Lady of LaSalette, Attleboro, MA, the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C, etc.)

- Marian centers and scholarly societies in the USA and Canada since 1900 (e.g. The Mariological Society of America, the Marian Library at the University of Dayton, the International Marian Research Institute, etc.)

- Popular Marian organizations and movements in the USA and Canada since 1900 (e.g. The Legion of Mary, the Blue Army, Holy Cross Family Ministries, Schönstatt Movement, the World Apostolate of Fatima, etc.)

- Mariology and Marian devotion in Catholic education in the USA and Canada since 1900.

- Significant Mariologists in the USA and Canada since 1900 (e.g. Juniper Carol, O.F.M., Frederick Jelly, O.P., Eamon Carroll, O.Carm., Theodore Koehler, S.M.).

Deadline: Oct. 31, 2011

Please send the title and précis of your proposal to: Fr. John Phalen, C.S.C. at jphalen@hcfm.org or to Dr. Robert Fastiggi at Fastiggi.Robert@shms.edu. The précis should be 350-500 words and include sources. For more information call or write to: Mariological Society of America, MSA Secretariat, Fr. Thomas A. Thompson, S.M. at: Thomas.Thompson@notes.edayton.edu. The Marian Library, University of Dayton, Dayton, OH 45469-1390; Phone. 937-229 – 4294; FAX. 937- 229- 4258.

The next meeting of the Ecumenical Society of the Blessed Virgin Mary – USA will be held on Saturday, October 8, 2011, at Andover Newton Theological School in Newton Centre, Massachusetts (just outside of Boston). It will be held in Davis Hall, Davis classroom 101 (lower level) from 9:00am to 3:00pm. The schedule will include two speakers in the morning and two in the afternoon. The following speakers are confirmed:

* Rt. Rev. Leonard Faris, Pastor of St. George Antiochian Church in Lowell, Massachusetts, who will speak on Mary, the Theotokos, in the Antiochian tradition.

* Christopher M. Carr, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Theology, Caldwell College, Caldwell, New Jersey, who will present a paper entitled, “Mary: Paradigm of Justice” which posits that the authoritative Marian doctrines found in Scripture and Tradition illustrate all the defining characterististics of the cardinal virtue of justice.

* Shobha Shamu Ramapriya, a Hindu author of children’s books and a teacher of Shloka chanting for children at Shri Shirdi Sai Baba Temple in Billerica, Massachusetts, will make a presentation on Mary and Hinduism.

* An additional speaker will be confirmed shortly.

Light refreshments will be served in the morning and lunch will be provided.

To learn about Andover Newton Theological School, please go to http://www.ants.edu/ants-difference/about/

For directions to Andover Newton and a map of the campus, go to http://www.ants.edu/ants-difference/map/

Please note that Davis Hall is building #7 on the campus map.

If you plan to attend the meeting on Saturday and are going to be in the area on that Sunday, a trip into Boston for church services and sight-seeing may be planned. If interested please send an email to esbvmeditor@hotmail.com as soon as possible.

For further information, please contact ESBVM USA president, Dr. Virginia M. Kimball, at vkimball@assumption.edu

Joe Farrelly, who died on 31st August, became the second great enabler and inspiration of the Ecumenical Society of the Blessed Virgin Mary, following in the footsteps of Martin Gillett who had founded the Society in 1967. Both were Catholic layman and both had an incredible network of significant contacts on which they could call both inside and outside of their own Christian tradition. Martin Gillett was a English Catholic convert where Joe Farrelly was a cradle Irish Catholic. Beyond his wise and pastoral gifts as a devoted schoolmaster were Joe’s commitments to the cause of the Catholic Marian societies and Catholic agencies dedicated to those in need. Like Martin Gillett, Joe believed that Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Reformed and Methodist theologians and thinkers – clergy and laity alike – could be serious, spiritual and critical together about the place of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the worship, reflection and dialogue of all the mainstream churches. Often graciously and amusingly critical of those inside the leadership of his own tradition it was out of his deep and loyal Catholicism that Joe formed lasting relationships with church leaders and shakers across the Christian spectrum. He had an eye for the deep ecumenists within Orthodoxy, Anglicanism and in the Reformed traditions. He had close friends within British Methodism, and for almost twenty years attended the Annual Low Weekend Conference of the Methodist Sacramental Fellowship. He was above all an encourager who built on the potential he saw in the young – ordained and lay. Joe’s outstanding service to British Roman Catholicism and to the crucial place of Mary in ecumenical devotion and dialogue rightly earned him the recognition of a Papal knighthood. He was never happier than being part of an ecumenical pilgrimage to Rome and Assisi. His anecdotal memory of the unofficial history of more than eight decades of English Catholicism, as he relayed it to Christians of all traditions, was a joy to experience. Joe was totally supported in his life and work by his widow Ann, much loved in a family that has not been without its sorrows and will continue to be held with love in the memory and prayers of his friends.

Norman Wallwork

2nd September 2011

ESBVM learns with sadness of the death earlier today of Joe Farrelly K.C.S.G., longtime and dedicated member of the Society, its Council and Executive. May his soul rest in peace and may Our Lady pray for him.

The funeral is to be at St Elphege [Joe’s parish church], 120 Stafford Road, Wallington, Surrey SM6 9AY. Tel/Fax: 020 8647 5079 on September 22nd 2011 at 10.00am.

The next meeting of the ESBVM Executive will take place on Thursday 15th Sept at St.Vincent’s Carlisle Place: 12 noon [lunch] 13.00-15.00 [business].

Members of the Executive are asked to notify the General Secretary of their ability to attend.