Essays and Articles by Mgsr.
O'Reilly
During his fairly brief lifetime, Msgr. O’Reilly published very
few articles. Here are those he did see through publication.
Article/Essay |
File |
As a physicist and a theologian, Msgr. O’Reilly was interested in
the connections between the temporal world of eating and work and technology
and the transtemporal world of the Eucharist. In this brief essay (just
a little over 2000 words), “The Christian in a Technological World,” a
transcription of a talk he gave at St. John’s Seminary and later
published in The Evangelist, the journal of St. John’s Seminary
College (1963–2003), he tries to tie the temporal and the transtemporal
together. Here is a summary: “The Mass is a mystery of death, of
the body and of eating. The Eucharist is often spoken of as the Bread of
Life. Let us not forget that it is also the Bread of Death. We communicate
in the Body that died and rose. It would be foolish to forget the negative
in our hurry to recognize the positive, to exalt life at the expense of
death. In the Mass, above all, we give assent to the fact that eating lowers
us into a tomb from which God, not ourselves, will lift us. Might we not
include in the meaning of the Mass a reference to the whole effort of technology
which man expends on the world’s body, and of which eating is but
a paradigm? The transubstantiation of the terrestrial bread and wine would
then be a foreshadowing of the new day that will dawn for the world of
matter which we can only lower gently and lovingly into the grave. The
Mass in this view would express a dedication of man, not to a triumphalistic
technology, but to an integral Christian humanism in which the incarnational
and eschatological are kept together, in which a ‘Yes’ to life
is not turned into a ‘No’ to death, in which the negative is
not damned in favor or the positive.” |
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Msgr. O’Reilly distilled a
spirituality of the ministerial priesthood into this sermon he preached
at a first Mass in 1973. See his famous definition
of ministry / ministerial priesthood (below). |
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At the time of the publication of Humanae Vitae, the 1968 encyclical
of Pope Paul VI on human birth, Msgr. O’Reilly labored to understand
and explain the teaching to the many lay people and priests who asked him
for help. Here is his abridged version of his explanation, “The
Moral Problem of Contraception.” |
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At the time of the publication of Humanae Vitae, the 1968 encyclical
of Pope Paul VI on human birth, Msgr. O’Reilly labored to understand
and explain the teaching to the many lay people and priests who asked him
for help. Here is his expanded version of his explanation, “The Moral
Problem of Contraception,” considered by many theologians the finest
essay ever written on the subject. |
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During the upheaval in the archdiocese
of Los Angeles over the conflict between Cardinal McIntyre and
the Immaculate Heart Sisters, Msgr. O’Reilly
wrote the essay, “Lay and Religious Life: Their Distinction and
Complementarity” in the journal Review for Religious. In
some ways this essay is a synthesis of all of O’Reilly’s
theology. He attempts to connect all of lay life—the world of business
[money], marriage [sex], and government [power], taken in their largest
meanings— with the worlds of word, sacrament, and community and
of poverty, chastity, and obedience. He doesn’t waste a syllable,
so you might want to use the three following charts to guide your reading.
To help you understand “Lay
and Religious Life: Their Distinction and Complementarity” I
have prepared a chart, of which this is the first page. |
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To help you understand “Lay
and Religious Life: Their Distinction and Complementarity” I
have prepared a chart, of which this is the second page. |
13Kb |
To help you understand “Lay
and Religious Life: Their Distinction and Complementarity” I
have prepared a chart, of which this is the third page.
It is also a summary of his synthesis of theology and life. |
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|
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The essay, “Lay and Religious Life: Their Distinction and Complementarity” was
written especially for religious women and men. “Renewal and Reconciliation” takes
the same themes and applies them especially to lay people. These are reflections
Msgr. O’Reilly wrote for the Holy Year 1975 for The Tidings, the
newspaper of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. You might recall that this
was the era of old shortages and government scandal (the Watergate scandal)
and turmoil in the church. |
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Leaders at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena asked Msgr. O’Reilly
to help them plan their spiritual formation program. Here is his essay.
It contains his famous definition of ministry / ministerial priesthood: “THE
PRIEST is one to whom his/her people come at those junctions of life when
they come face to face with the unsolvable, those moments when they meet
with the limits of creaturely power, when they experience darkness or have
intimations of mortality. AT SUCH MOMENTS people have need to draw near
to one who, while able like other men and women to swim in the waters of
life and stay afloat in them, is not averse to drowning graciously in them,
able to be overcome. PEOPLE need one who has entered deeply into the paschal
mystery of Jesus, REJOICING IN LIFE BUT AT EASE WITH DEATH.” |
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