St Catherine's

St. Catherine's Church, Meath St., Dublin 8
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On the morning of 2 January 2012, the Parish Priest of St. Catherine's, Fr Niall Coghlan, noticed a man in the church who had no shoes. So he got him a pair of shoes.

Later in the day, the man, Patrick Currie (49,) came back and burned down the church.

The interior in ruins

The PP likened the result to a scene from the London Blitz in World War Two. He said hundreds of years of history had been destroyed. The church had been built in 1857 on the site of an earlier church dating from 1782.

"The fire started at the crib. The fire brigade told me that fumes from the crib then got trapped in the upper parts of the church.

"As soon as that area received oxygen, it ignited and sent a fireball from one end of the church to the other. So the real damage is up towards the ceiling of the church.

"It's the whole church that is ruined, not just the front. We've been told it is now a dangerous building and so we can't allow parishioners in to look at it.

The stained glass window, beyond repair

One of the chief victims was the elaborate stained glass window above the main altar.

Patrick Currie, who claimed to be Jesus Christ, was arrested, charged and subsequently found guilty but insane. I had heard that he had been on his way to burn down John's Lane church when arrested, but accounts on the spot suggest that he simply stayed around to boast about his handiwork and was easily picked up by the Garda. He did claim at the time that he was on his way to Rome to burn the paedophiles. Unfortunately he never got that far.

I had heard part of this story from Kevin Costello about a year ago and was now in the Meath St. area for the first time since. So I thought I'd check out the ruin.

Beautifully restored interior

What ruin?

The interior, with the exception of the main stained glass window, has been magnificently restored. Most of the required €4m funding came out of insurance, but this was supplemented by local effort.

Fr. Coghlan again

"We did a street collection, we had a night out at the dog racing, and we had participants in the women's mini marathon. We also held raffles. And, parishioners bought a slate for the roof, each slate was €5."

"We employed people for two years in a very bleak time. The local area benefited from the fact that there were so many people working in the church."

I actually met a lady there who had bought two slates. She was not from the parish but had come over from Marino to pray in the adjacent Lourdes Grotto for success for a family member in her exams.

The Baptismal Font

Then I saw the baptismal font, and that reminded me of the rest of Kevin's story.

His niece, Imelda May, was about to have a baby, and she wanted the baby baptised in the same font as both she and her mother had been baptised in. The only problem was, that the church was then in ruins and could not be used, though the font was OK. So plans were laid to move the font to St. Catherine's sister church, John's Lane, in Thomas St. for the ceremony. I must ask Kevin how that worked out.

The Parish's Vision Statement

I'm not a great one for Mission or Vision Statements in general, but I'd definitely make an exception in this case. Not only is there a strong sense of parish and community in this area, but it has proved itself in the restoration of this church.

Update
I gather the baptism font arrangement wasn't possible so a long family tradition came to an end.

I understand also that this is not the end of the high altar window story and that a replacement of some sort is being made up.

Gaudium et Spes

Originally posted March 2012

Whatever happened to Vatican II?

Well you might ask.

The bad news: it was strangled at birth. The good news: the body was spirited away to the cryo-chamber, to be thawed out at an appropriate time.

Margaret Mac Curtain, OP, (Sr. Benvenuta to you) thinks now might be about the right time to turn up the heat.

She was giving a talk in St. Mary's, Haddington Road, last night (8/3/12) in which she revisited the great hopes held out for Pope John XXIII's Vatican Council.

She recalled that the potential for progress and change contained in Council documents was subverted in a war of attrition by the Vatican. A good example was the encyclical Humanae Vitae, promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1968, which put an end, once and for all, to the more progressive possibilities contained in the Council documents.

The years that followed saw a clamping down on anything approaching free theological speculation and the suppression of any theologians who even hinted at questioning the party line. These were grim years for those who saw the church as "ecclesia reformanda" as Bishop Martin recently called it.

And in more recent times, the Vatican continued to firmly place the protection of the institution over the interests of its flock, culminating in the "Vatican hanging the bishops out to dry" over the child abuse scandal.

Today's message from on high is that everyone must toe the party line. But all is not lost. The issues that confronted the Vatican Council will not go away, and hopefully, the cryo-chamber will be thawed out soon.

I think Margaret was, strictly speaking, forbidden from discussing the ordination of women, which is probably why, in a spirit of true obedience, she didn't advance a single argument against the idea.

She hoped the forthcoming International Eucharistic Congress, in Dublin in June, would be taken as an opportunity for developing the faith. Surprisingly, she is not scheduled to speak at the Congress.

There was a brief Q&A interlude at the end of the session, during which we were treated to Rory Connor's standard litany on the silence of the liberals in not criticising those who spread lies about John Charles McQuaid and pedophilia. He also tried, unsuccessfully, to involve Margaret in his crusade.

St. Mary's by night

St. Mary's are to be commended on this series of talks which has now been running since 2006. Talks have been first class and attendance in general has been high. Needless to say, last night's session was packed.

I have posted on a previous talk in the series by John McDaid, SJ, on reconciling the theologies of Jews and Christians.

For those who are interested in such matters I can report that there was no mention during the evening of Fr. Vincent Twomey.

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NOTE: I originally posted the above post in March 2012, but when it became clear that the CDF were into an orgy of silencing those they saw as deviating from the party line, I took down the post. I did not in any way wish to contribute to the possible silencing of this worthy lady. I did that off my own bat, without consulting her, and just informed her after it was done.

I am now reposting it, again without consulting her, in the hope that, with the coming of Pope Francis, there will be an end to new silencings and, should the CDF attempt to take a pot, this will be disregarded by the superiors of the religious orders, following Pope Francis's advice to the American nuns.

I understand that Sr. Benvenuta's health has seriously deteriorated since March 2012 and I wish her all the best in this regard.

Untying the Knots

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I have reported previously on talks in St. Mary's, Haddington Road, in what has now become known as the Patrick Finn series of lectures. It is to St. Mary's credit that these talks have been of a high standard and have been followed by a no-holds-barred Q&A session.

Last night was no exception and we were treated to a very interesting talk on Pope Francis, by Paul Vallely, who has researched the pope's life in depth and has written a revealing and authoritative book on the pontiff.

The first thing we learn is that there are two Jorge Bergoglios.

The first was such a died in the wool traditionalist and strict disciplinarian that he totally messed up anything he put his hand to in his clerical roles in Argentina, so much so that he had to be got out of the country. It took three subsequent Jesuit provincials to undo the damage he had done to that order in Argentina.

This man was accused of collaborating with the Argentinian junta and specifically of betraying two members of his Jesuit order to the military who inflicted severe torture on both of them.

This man used his power to quash any attempts to bring liberation theology to bear on the plight of the poor and marginalised.

But somewhere along the way, and with no small help from his sojourn abroad and his subsequent banishment to Argentina's second city, Cordoba, hundreds of miles from the capital, he went through the dark night of the soul and emerged a different man.

The second Jorge Bergoglio

This second man was still a conservative as far as doctrine was concerned, but his whole approach to his mission in life had changed and he now not only embraced liberation theology but became the "bishop of the slums". He threw away the trappings of office and lived a life as close to that of an ordinary person as he could.

It is this second man we now have as Pope. Humble by design, a skillful political operator, and a man who hopes to reform the Catholic church and put it in a position to carry out its original religious mission.

He is sending out ambiguous signals, both to avoid confrontation, and to give himself room for manoeuvre. He leaves Müller in charge of the CDF, gives Maradiaga his head, and tells the USA nuns to ignore the same CDF. Unfortunately, in his wish to avoid confrontation, he is unlikely to undo any of the silencing imposed by the CDF under previous pontiffs, so Tony Flannery's analysis, that the ball is now in the court of the Orders' Superiors, is correct.

Fr. Franz Jalics

He just might have become Pope in 2005, but any possibility of this was effectively scuppered by the circulation of accusations of ineptitude and betrayal. The Cardinals, then assembled in Rome for the Conclave, were reminded of his "betrayal" to the Junta of the two Jesuits under his command, Fathers Yorio and Jalics. Subsequent judgement suggests that while his actions may well have contributed to the arrest and torture of the men, he did not consciously give them up to the military, though he should have foreseen the likely consequences of what he did. When he ordered his Jesuits to pull out of any involvement with liberation theology and cease the social work they had been doing, these two priests refused. He was incensed and got the bishop to revoke their faculties. It appears the military interpreted this as a signal that it would be safe to move against the men and so they were arrested and tortured. Fr. Yorio is dead but (the new) Francis has recently been reconciled with Fr. Jalics who runs a retreat centre in Germany.

Paul Vallely drew attention to the symbolism of Francis's actions. As he remarked, symbolism is very important to a church which has its sacraments. And Francis has been sending some mighty signals, from his eschewing the papal apartments in favour of a flat, to his dispensing with most of the ornaments of papal office. In place of the ornate gold bejewelled crosses of previous pontiffs he wears a pewter cross with the motif of a simple shepherd tending his flock under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost.

The Pope's pewter cross

So what of the future? Well, it remains to be seen if this man can reform centuries of clericalism and make the universal church relevant to ordinary people.

He comes from a region where the church is growing, and, no doubt, hopes to translate that success from a local into a universal success story.


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Posts on previous talks:

Michael Jackson, John Coolahan, John McDade SJ, Jim Corkery SJ, John Bruton, Margaret McCurtain

Holy Twitterums

It was Benedict XVI who started tweeting, and I commented at the time that the tweets tended to be bland aphorisms. When Benedict resigned, the Pontifical Twitter Account went into "Sede Vacante" mode and only emerged on the election of Francis.

I commented then that I would be watching his tweets, implying that I hoped they would be an improvement on the banal aphorisms coming from Benedict - well, not quite from Benedict himself; I gather, since, that an Irishman was writing them for him.

So I have been following Francis's tweets from the beginning and have already been twice ridiculed for my daily responses on Twitter.

I need to make a few things clear. I don't for a moment think Francis reads my responses. In fact, I don't think Francis even reads his own tweets, much less writes them. I assume they are composed and launched into the ether by some Holy Hack.

So, why do I bother replying.

Well, in the first place, it's a sort of test to keep me alert on these long mornings. I just resolved to try and post a reply to his every tweet that in some way related to the subject being tweeted. This can be difficult as the current tweets, like the previous tweeter's, have descended into equally bland aphorisms.

While I'm at it, and if there is any room left, I then just throw in a reminder that the silenced are still muted and that it would be a singular gesture to #FreeTonyFlannery, who has been greatly wronged by a church that refuses to redefine some of its dogmas to make them intelligible to a modern audience. This it does out of a misplaced sense of the immutability of "tradition" and a fear of the "appalling vista" that it sees before it should it admit to ever having been wrong.

So there. I'm not losing a night's sleep over the Pope's tweeets nor do I spend any time composing replies. When one of his tweets pops up on my Tweetdeck, I just shoot from the hip.

Having said all that, I will be interested to see if this Pope, irrespective of his tweets, does make for a change from his two immediate predecessors. He is certainly more pastoral and communicative in his manner and rumour has it that he favours a more decentralised and collegiate church. Good. The real test will be whether he succeeds in getting the church out of the doctrinal hole into which it is still digging itself.