A PROPHETIC TALK

Dr Peter Kreeft gave a talk in Steubenville about a month ago and it's worth listening too.  He has a clever, 'Chestertonesque' use of language and has something to say.  It complements the message of Michael Voris over at Real Catholic TV that we are called to be saints and to make a difference.  Only if we are really and truly trying to do God's will can Christianity survive in the modern world.

DUTCH CATHOLIC SEXUAL ABUSE SCANDAL

The Dutch Catholic child sex abuse has been out since Friday but the Catholic blogosphere is strangely quiet. Again we must face the draining of a cesspool of corruption going back to the forties. What went wrong that such evil should spread through the Church? How did it happen that Bishops and religious superiors should fail to deal effectively with this horror? How are to undo the hurt and the damage? At least Gloria.tv had a post about it:



Serious questions need to be asked by both liberal and conservative, 'progressive' and traditionalist Catholics about how our Church allowed this to occur. Partly it was the industrialisation of care: the attempt to answer the social problem of large numbers of parentless or homeless children on an industrial scale. This attempt was also an attempt at social engineering treating children as mere parts of a machine that could be trained and disciplined to fit in. Typically it was underfunded and became a dumping ground for the less successful religious and teaching staff. This model created a 'killing ground' for pedophiles and other disturbed individuals. The damage could've been lessened if those in authority had listened and acted with greater integrity and effectiveness. Instead disastrous decisions were made to ignore, to hide and to deny what was going on. That is not just immoral it is criminal. 

Why then the silence from the Catholic blogosphere when there was so much comment when the Irish reports were published? Was Ireland worse? I don't think so. The Norwegians have a scandalous history in their handling of the Lebensborn: children of German and Norwegian parents who were also ill-treated and abused.  Why the silence on these cases?

Perhaps there still remain blindspots that need correction, biased positions that need to be confronted. Perhaps there are those who wish to see these issues in simplistic terms as belonging only to one class, e.g. 'homosexual pedophiles', or one people, e.g.'Irish Clerical sexual abuse', rather than a worldwide evil, a cancer that is eating away at mankind and corroding civilisation and especially the Church, from within.

ARCHBISHOP URGES PEOPLE TO BE MATURE ABOUT THE QUESTION OF FAITH AND MEMBERSHIP OF THE CHURCH

Protect the Pope have a short article on some comments by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin drawing on reports in the Irish papers. Broadcast last night as part of RTE's 'Would you Believe?' series the Archbishop was interviewed by Mick Peelo.

“It requires maturity on those people who want their children to become members of the church community and maturity on those people who say ‘I don’t believe in God and I really shouldn’t be hanging on to the vestiges of faith when I don’t really believe in it’.” The Irish Times reports: ‘ The Archbishop of Dublin,Diarmuid Martin,has urged the country’s lapsed Catholics to have the maturity to leave the church. Over the past two decades,rising numbers of ‘a la carte’Catholics simply turn up at the altar for the sacraments like baptism,communion and marriage.

Of course the Archbishop's position that non-believers should not pretend to be believers and abuse the Sacraments becomes in the Irish Times an urging of "lapsed Catholics to have the maturity to leave the church". I agree with Fr. Hassett, a parish moderator, who believes the situation is more complex than a mere 'social Catholicism'. We have generations of poorly catechised and evangelised Catholics who are rejecting what they do not understand. Some have been badly hurt by clergy, religious or over-enthusiastic laity. For many it may be simply that it's easier to live in the halfway house of being culturally Catholic without committing to the faith in a real way. These people believe at some level but not enough to make a deeper, more public commitment. But what do we expect after all these years of liberalism and neglect? What do we expect when Confession is not promoted or when the Church's teaching is so often questioned evenly her own clergy? What we have are theists not Christians. There is belief in God 'somewhere way up there' but He is no longer so judgmental or authoritarian. Instead He has become rather soft. He has become a sort of Santa writ large but not much more real. The long road back from such a state will be long and hard indeed.

WHAT I HAVE BEEN UP TO...

Last week our Community Care group ran a non-uniform day (actually three class periods: 9.00-11.00am) in aid of our Barnardo's Christmas party. Community Care are a group of fifth and transition year students who volunteer to do fund-raise for charities etc. The party goes back to before my time but when I took over I switched from asking the students to donate toys to raising money (begging) instead. This year I eventually got tired of that. A few years ago one frustrated fifth year student referred to a class as a "shower of stingy b******s". I guess she was a little over enthusiastic. So this year we ran cake sales. The group is divided into four teams named after the seasons and each team does a Friday cake sale which involves making the cakes and selling them during little and big break. All though this was going very well we also ran the non-uniform day and raised over €1640. Now we can run our Christmas party and give a sizeable donation to Barnardo's as well. The cake sales will now be in aid of the Capuchin Day Centre for the homeless instead. The cake sales are fun. I get a kick our of advertising the produce and trying to do it in a humourous way. It adds to the 'buzz' of a Friday and the kids get to do something pleasurable (e.g. eating chocolate muffins) and help those less well off. It gives my Community Care group an experience of fund-raising and self-sacrifice. One group seemed to have had more fun making a mess of their cakes than anything else. I didn't think it was possible to make chocolate Rice Krispy cakes that had no chocolate in them and didn't even stick together. I had never heard of 'Rocky Road' before - apparently the ingredients include chocolate, of course, as well as marshmallow, biscuit and Crunchy. Some have a real knack for baking unless, of course, it's their mother's cooking they're passing off as their own. As soon as we have a date settled for the party I will give each group their allotment of cash and the names and ages of the kids and let them go but presents. The party only lasts about an hour and a half to two hours but it's great fun. Watch this space.

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?