I have noticed that once again some Irish issues are attracting comment on the web especially relations between the Vatican and the Irish Government. I support Shane's suggestion that this is a golden opportunity for the Irish Church to lessen the influence of the Irish Government, and that of the 'liberal' forces behind it, over the Irish Church. Lessening that influence must be part of turning the tide for the Church in Ireland. A problem for the Irish Church, as for the worldwide Church as well, is that too often the debate is viewed as between 'liberal' and 'conservative'. These are social categories imported into the Church. They represent attitudes to change, to the use of power, to wealth etc., that are too easily confused with those of other 'liberals' and 'conservatives'. It's not enough to be conservative. To be conservative for conservatism's sake is an abomination. the same might be said of 'traditionalism'. The real issue is orthodoxy: faithfulness to the Scriptures, to Tradition, and to the Magisterium and to all of it in all it's splendid depth and glory. Orthodoxy is what the saints were careful to preserve in the face of persecution from 'liberals' and 'conservatives' alike. The search to be truly orthodox is part and parcel of the search for holiness: to be in full communion with the Father's will made manifest in the Son made flesh. If we seek that orthodoxy it will not only bring us to heaven, it will bring others and perhaps even hasten the day when the Church, East and West, is one again.

MAKING LENT A PREPARATION FOR AN ACT OF CONSECRATION TO JESUS THROUGH MARY

Fr. Ryan Erlenbush over at the New Theological Movement has an interesting and worthwhile suggestion for Lent: use it to consecrate oneself to Jesus through Mary. Journeying through Lent with the Mother of God sounds to me the best of all ways. Spread the word and hopefully many will take up his suggestion. I have been quite lazy in my blogging among other things. It hasn't helped that I've been sick the last few weeks and I'm still not recovered. That's my excuse literally. I need to restart but with little 'doable' steps. So I'm going to follow Fr. Erlenbush's suggestion and make this Lent a time of consecration. Join us if you can.

GOOD THINGS THAT HAVE HAPPENED

A few good things happened yesterday.  Obviously there were more but these were the ones I noticed:

Money (destined for charity) that I had thought I'd lost turned up in my office in the school.  I had last seen it on the refectory table in the friary and do not recall bringing it back to the school.  I had given up on St. Anthony and having searched our bins, my room and anywhere else I thought it might be said a prayer to my Dad that it would turn up.  I further prepared myself to explain to the donor (a member of staff) that I had lost the donation and would like to know the amount so that the friary could make good the loss.  When I arrived at my office there it was on the chair.

Then I was given a Nintendo Wii plus games and extras to give away.  It came via another member of staff, unused but without its box, and we had agreed to donate it to Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children, Crumlin.  I dropped it over to them today.

The third good thing was that my Mac, whose DVD drive has stopped working, will not have to be left in for repair but will be fixed while I wait as soon as they have the parts (I'm waiting for the call).

I was also given a Christmas present by a Sixth year: three handmade sweets.  I am saving them for Christmas day!

Small things that put an extra shine on the day.

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.