AN UPDATE AND A MEDITATION: ARE OUR BISHOPS WARTIME BISHOPS?

It being nearly a month since I last posted I feel obliged to give an update. I am in limbo awaiting the results of a process that will hopefully open the door to the post I have been sent to Cork to fill. This process is outside the control of myself and my Order. There may be 'politics' involved. My future co-workers await my arrival and are seriously under-staffed. In the meantime I say Mass, hear a few confessions and help out where I am asked. My prayerlife is getting a bit more attention but there is more free time than I was expecting. I may go back to painting if only to give me something to do that has measureable results. I wish I could be more concrete about my situation but I can't. I am growing tired of friars asking me how I am getting on in x. I am in limbo.

In the wider world the news that the Mater and St. Vincent's hospital, both in Dublin, have decided to comply with the Government's abortion legislation (by exstension any liberalization of that law) raises questions about the role of the Catholic Church in these institutions. The silence of our bishops is deafening. Perhaps they are busy working the back channels, hoping that networking will still find a compromise. I am beginning to think of them as ecclesiastical Chamberlains searching for a peace, a way of compromise that ultimately only feeds into the war that is here.

I mean it when I say war. The Government has declared war on the Catholic faith by naming and obliging Catholic institutions to provide abortions. I read somewhere that when war begins it takes time to find wartime commanders. Peacetime encourages the careers of managers, networkers and diplomats. Wartime demands commanders who can not only manage but sacrifice, who can strategize and command, who have the courage to engage with the enemy in deadly combat. Are any of our bishops wartime leaders? Have any the backbone to stand up and take action? What would happen if the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin were to withdraw from the hospitals, instruct the other Catholic bodies to do likewise and sell any interest, if has any, in them? These institutions would no longer be Catholic but any future evil would no longer be done under the auspices of a Catholic institution. The bishops have dithered enough. The message needs to be sent to the politicians. It is not the Church that is 'politicizing the Eucharist' but the politicians who voted for abortion and then attempting to receive communion. Those who support the killing of the innocent have no place in God's house let alone in receiving communion.