ON CERTAIN SUGGESTIONS ABOUT THE CHURCH IN IRELAND

While surfing the net, catching up with news, I came across, via New Advent, this article from George Weigel . I know Mr. Weigel is respected in some Church circles but what gets my blood boiling is that an American writer or pundit thinks that he can comment on the state of the Irish Church while not actually living here. The Irish Church has problems. These are deep and fundamentally theological and spiritual problems. They also have administrative dimensions but I am not convinced that his root and branch pruning would work. We Irish in Ireland are a people deeply aware of our roots and our place in the world. We have our own spirituality within the Catholic tradition and it is from within that tradition that the healing of Ireland will come. Only a return to the penitential way of our ancestors (most visible in Croagh Patrick and Lough Derg) will reawaken our hearts. We need to become a people that weeps for and with the abused, for and with the abusers, for those who failed and for the renewal of our Church and our land. I am not sure even those outside Ireland of Irish descent would properly grasp that kind of Irishness. As for his suggestion that an American bishop be sent well that beggars belief. The Irish clergy who went to America went to serve the Irish Catholics in America and built up the American Church as a consequence. An American bishop sent to Ireland, even one of Irish descent, would be coming to a different culture and from the start would be seen as an imposition and an insult. It would be interpreted as a punishment. Neither am I convinced that resizing would help. That might make it easier for the Holy Father and his advisers to find bishops for Irish Sees but it would not necessarily mean a boon to Ireland. Ireland really is a parochial country where there can be 'micro-cultures' to parallel our micro-climates. Just spending a year in a parish in Cork as a deacon taught me that. Some reorganization is needed. Some rationalization could help. But unless there is a fundamental shift at a theological and spiritual level (and changing structures will not do this) all that change will be cosmetic. For Ireland to change it must come from within. It must be a return to our roots. That insight came to me on retreat while reading Irene Hausherr's Penthos. Only if we turn to Christ and plead for His help will there be real change.

THE IRISH GOVERNMENT DOES NOT WANT THE POPE

So the Irish Government, having made itself a laughing stock for closing the embassy in the Vatican while keeping embassies in places like Lesotho, will not be extending an invitation to the Holy Father to visit our country next year. So? He should come anyway. The hierarchy should invite him. Stuff the Government. Separation of Church and State works both ways. The Holy Father should come, he should meet victims of CSA and he should get the opportunity to address the Irish people directly. The secularists fear that. They fear that he would make a serious impact on Ireland and against their cause. They think they have the Irish Church on the back foot, that she is in terminal decline and that its only a matter of time before she is finished. They should read history. The Holy Spirit has again and again fulfilled our Lord's promises. He will look after everything if only we are faithful. It is up to us who love the Church and want to see her flourishing to fast, pray and sacrifice for her renewal. That renewal begins with each of us, in the heart, in our lives. Governments come and go. The Irish Government doesn't speak for the Irish people in everything. Let the Holy Father come and stuff the begrudgers!

Our brothers and sisters in Egypt are being persecuted anew. They have long suffered under the yoke of Islamic intolerance. Under this new government whatever protection they had is now gone. Protesting an attack on a church they were themselves attacked by the Army. The Army claimed that they were fired on. Peaceful unarmed protesters encounter armed soldiers who, claiming they are fired on, open fire on the protesters and kill a number of them. The Government backs the soldiers. Now where have we heard that before? Oh yes! January 30 1972: Bloody Sunday, Derry, Northern Ireland. At least the Brits didn't tear up and down in armoured cars. While the North is slowly finding it's way to peace how is the Islamic world going to change, how are they going to show tolerance towards minorities? Are Christians, Jews and others always going to be second-class citizens living in fear?

My father died of cancer Friday week (16th September 2011) and so I have been rather distracted.  I celebrated his funeral Mass and have offered Mass each day for him in fulfillment of a promise.   I know it comes to us all that we lose the ones we love (at least in this world).  This is an undeniable fact.  Watching my father's painful decline was not easy.  He is pictured above with my niece on the day last August that she started Secondary school. Gone was the physical strength I remember from my youth.  He grew more and more helpless.  His mischievous sense of humour was more visible for a time but that too was smothered by his medication and his pain.  He came alive for the Mass on the Sunday before he died and later again he responded to the evening Angelus but the rest of the time he hung between sleep and quiet suffering.  His appetite was negligible.

He was alert on the Tuesday for his sister's visit but after that he declined.  The last time I exchanged any words with him was on the Thursday morning - I had spent the night at home - and even then they were few.  I looked at his poor emaciated body and thought of Christ on the Cross.  I  knew I would use that text from the Gospel for his funeral Mass.

My Mother has lost her friend of 66 years and husband of 48.  I don't  know how to describe how she is.  Watching her loneliness and quiet sorrow is another grief for us to carry.  

 My cousin, who has been a tower of strength and support as well as practical intervention, asked me how I could not doubt there was a God in heaven seeing my Dad suffer.  I could only reply that the suffering in the world is the fault of human choices.  People suffer because of their own or other people's wrong-doing.  The people who died on 9/11 died because of the warped minds of their attackers.  The many others from that day who now suffer ill-health do so because those buildings, in their collapse, released so much dangerous dust all because of the attack.  Those who mourn the dead suffer as well.  The consequences of the attack ripple out and may never be fully mapped.  So people suffer.  All we can do is unite our suffering with that of our Lord and trust that He will use it in some way to undo the evil that men do.

When our Lord told us to take up our cross and follow Him He meant He would lead us to Calvary.  The narrow way leads through the cross but we believe it leads to the Kingdom.  That does not mean it is any easier to watch helplessly as someone mounts the cross, as a loved one endures pain and the loss of much that they had come to accept as part and parcel of themselves and eventually embraces death.  All any of us can do is walk with them, support them (like Simon of Cyrene) and trust that somehow this fits with God's plan.


I could no more doubt the existence of God than I could that of the Sun.  My father was not a wealthy man but he bequeathed this precious gift to me: my faith.  Perhaps faith is like the opposite of bereavement.  When one loses someone there is an absence and great suffering.  The one who was so alive is gone.  When one begins to believe there is now a presence where once there had been a presence.  The absence of a loved one does not depend on oneself and neither does the presence of God.  But God remains invisible to the material eye.  He reveals Himself only to the spiritual 'eye' of faith.  Once  that eye is opened one cannot deny the light.



Still that does not change one's feelings.  Bereavement is like having one's heart dipped in acid - it changes everything.  I have wept in bursts, sometimes unexpectedly, often as the climax of buildup of sorrow.  At times it is a physically tangible pressure, a tightening of the throat, a filling up of the body with weariness.  This will not end soon.  I will with time grow adjusted to it and to my loss as generations of generations have done.  I have become one of the many who grieve today.  All I can do is greet each day as it comes, offer this suffering as a prayer of sorts, a sacrifice, embracing this cross for myself and others, especially my Dad and keep going.  How must those who have lost a spouse or a child feel?  It is incomprehensible.

A SHORT UPDATE

My father, Paddy Forde, is dying of cancer.  We discovered his condition during the Summer and the time of his passing away is close.  Please pray for him and for our family at this difficult time.

IRISH GOVERNMENT PROPOSES TO FORCE PRIESTS TO BREAK THE CONFESSIONAL SEAL

Government proposal to break the seal of confession is without precedent

The Taoiseach, the Minister for Justice and the Minister for Children are all indicating that a proposed new law will require priests to break the seal of confession if someone confesses to them the crime of paedophilia.
This would make us the one and only country in the Western world to have such a law. Even Revolutionary France in the days of its worst violence against the Church did not pass a law requiring the breaking of the seal of confession.
The justification for the law is that the crime of paedophilia is so heinous that no one who hears about it, under whatever circumstances, can be allowed to keep it to themselves.
But our Government is clearing missing something that every other Government can see, which is that at a minimum such a law is very unlikely to lead to a single conviction and at a maximum will be counter-productive and will make society less safe, rather than more safe.

Read the rest at the Irish Catholic.

I, for one, will not break the seal. I would encourage a victim or a perpetrator to tell the police or some other responsible person but I would not break the seal. Send me to prison, I don't care. I will not break the seal. Make Ireland a byword for intolerance and persecution.

Will this proposed law also oblige lawyers, doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists and counsellors? Should we not also report incest, rape, murder, and other serious crimes. If priests and others are obliged to report who will tell them anything? To tell them would be to tell the police.

What a stupid proposal.

I have alternative proposals.

BAN PORNOGRAPHY! Pornography has been linked repeatedly to prostitution and to violence against women and children. It degrades people. It leads people on a road that only ends in ever more depraved behaviour. Protect our children by banning it.

Strengthen families: real families, as in one man married to one woman with their children. recognize them as the building block of society and protect them with tax breaks and benefits.

I'm so annoyed at this that I emailed the Taoiseach.
Pleas do the same: webmaster@taoiseach.gov.ie.

WHY STUDY ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY?

This is interesting. Very worth while watching. Dr. Tom O'Loughlin (who is or was a priest of an English Diocese though he's Irish) taught me logic in Milltown Institute many years ago. He was very good teacher but he had us terrified. A very intelligent and learned man.