LAUDATO SI'

Click on any image for a larger version

I have blogged on some of the talks in this excellent series and the one advertised above is the last in the current season.

It was by Philip McDonagh, who I knew was a diplomat but did not know he was also a poet and playwrite. And I certainly wouldn't have predicted that he would be giving a learned talk on Pope Francis's world view as revealed in the Pope's encyclicals and others of his documents.

We had some few years ago a talk from Paul Vallely on the then newly elected Pope Francis which concentrated very much on his life experiences and his assumed dark night of the soul which transformed him from an anti liberation theology ideologue into a caring and thoughtful pastor.

The emphasis in this talk was quite different. Philip was examining the Pope's analysis of the world situation as he saw it, its causes, its characteristics and possible ways forward.

Needless to say the Pope's analysis was couched in religious terms but taking out God and religion still left you with a robust secular analysis. That's mine and not Philip's remark.

This was quite an extraordinary talk for its breadth and depth. Philip has trawled through and reflected on the Pope's various documents and has attempted to bring us a summary synthesis of what Francis is about. Clearly this does not convey the whole, in the sense that one would be better to read the documents and reflect on them oneself. In other words, follow Philip's own journey.

Nevertheless Philip has given us a worthy map or guide for so doing and if we don't get around to it then we have in his talk an adequate representation and sufficient material for reflection and discernment in relation to Francis's approach. Hopefully the full talk will be published soon.

Meanwhile I am committing what I hope is not a mortaller in distilling further, and commenting on, Philip's talk. It is well to state at the outset that Philip is not entering into discussion on specific theological or pastoral issues, even where he may refer to them in passing. His aim is to convey the broad sweep of Francis's thinking and in this I think he has succeeded admirably. Whether anyone is listening to the message and is prepared to act on it is another matter entirely.

My approach here is to refer to some of the elements in Philip's talk accompanied by comments of my own. I hope I am not doing Philip an injustice in my selection from his selection from Pope Francis.

Text starting from the left margin is mine. That with a single indent and in italics is Philip's. And that with a double indent but without italics is the Pope's direct.

I was aware of Francis's encyclical Laudato Si' but was under the impression that it dealt solely with the environment, particularly knowing that Seán McDonagh was said to have contributed to it. Philip, however, has shown us the breadth of the issues it deals with and I hope he'll forgive me for an extensive quote from his talk:

Laudato Si’, published in May 2015, offers a dramatic and original perspective on global affairs through this ecological lens. For Pope Francis, humanity is now at odds with nature in an unsustainable way. The encyclical deals in a scientific spirit with a whole range of issues including waste disposal, the warming of the climatic system, the destruction of ecosystems, the pressures that lead to mass migration, water quality and the control of water by multinational businesses, the loss of biodiversity, the over-exploitation of forests and oceans, new forms of social breakdown and social aggression, the role of the digital media, the disintegration of cities, weapons development, debt and the financial crisis; all this accompanied by a relative absence of leadership, laws, and political planning. Running through the whole picture are disturbing images of pollution and economic inequality.

Taking just one aspect of the modern world, I have been struck by how the choice of how to approach the economy is usually presented in binary form. Either regulate everything (USSR model) or regulate nothing (USA model). I note how both these approaches result in their own form of oligarchs.

My own view is for the social market economy where strong regulation is in place at a very high level, reflecting the social preferences of the community. Then the market is allowed to perform its distributive, resource allocation and incentive functions within this framework. This, I think, is compatible with Philip's take on the Pope:

Auditing the mechanisms of the economy from a well-rounded human perspective is essential for what Pope Francis has called ‘redemptive change.’

Achieving the well rounded human perspective, or agreeing the rules, is not so easy. This is big stuff going way beyond the market and the economy. And here Francis is insistent on the role of dialogue, the widest possible dialogue:

Pope Francis is deeply interested in dialogue. Laudato Si’ has passages on dialogue on the environment in the international community; dialogue for new national and local policies; dialogue and transparency in decision-making; politics and economy in dialogue; and religions in dialogue with science. Elsewhere the Pope calls for inter-generational dialogue; inter-cultural dialogue; and inter-religious dialogue. In his address on the occasion of the conferral of the Charlemagne Prize in May 2016, Pope Francis states that ‘peace will be lasting in the measure that we arm our children with the weapons of dialogue.’

This quote from Laudato Si' gives an idea of what is behind the Pope's thinking on the dialogue bit:

If the laws are to bring about significant, long-lasting effects, the majority of the members of society must be adequately motivated to accept them (211)

This is like the idea of sensus fidei when it comes to the promulgation of religious dogma or edicts. You have to bring the bulk of the faithful along with you for the edict to not only be obeyed but for it to have any validity. We come across the same distinction when differentiating between simple majority rule and the more complex concept of democracy. It's a distinction that people often find difficult to grasp and that suits their rulers just nicely.

As this advice is emanating from the leader of the Roman Catholic Church it is necessary to mention specifically inclusion of the oft neglected fifty per cent:

At the levels of both principles and ethics, room will have to be found for a dialogue on women’s equality and any lingering assumption that leadership in the different sectors is for a vir bonus, a ‘good man,’ as opposed to a ‘good person.’

And then, even when we get agreed rules they cannot bind everyone absolutely. There clearly has to be room left for individual moral choice, or in RC terms, following your informed conscience.

Discernment is essential, first, because the inner and true nature of any political situation is often not adequately captured by any rule.

Or, as Francis puts it in another way in Amoris Laetitia:

[natural law cannot be] presented as an already established set of rules that impose themselves a priori on the moral subject; rather it is a source of objective inspiration for the deeply personal process of making decisions (305)

At the same time we cannot afford to let ourselves be carried away with a sense of our own righteousness at the end of this process:

We might listen to the ancient Greeks: hubris is the archetypal human folly, against which a spontaneous reaction of shame is one of the last lines of defence.

And to put it another way in the vein of "Eternal vigilance is the price of peace":

There are signs that complacency about the state of our societal values can undermine democracy itself.

Philip quotes the Pope's four rules, which I haven't the space to elaborate here:

Time is greater than space
Unity prevails over conflict
Realities are more important than ideas
The whole is greater than the part

And Philip indulges in a little speculation here:

It would be a good exercise to try to imagine a non-violent strategy based on the Pope’s four principles for Israel and its neighbours; for the two Koreas and East Asia; or in any other current crisis.

There is clearly scope for reform, in both attitudes and actions in a lot of aspects of the modern world and Philip has listed a series of ten questions we might ask ourselves. I have just chosen three below by way of illustrationn:

The scope for aggiornamento is evident from the following questions:

2. Do we agree with Pope Francis that where economic decisions impact on others, governments have responsibilities – regarding, for example, our decisions on interest rates?

8. Do we accept that markets need a political context and a culture of trust that they themselves are incapable of producing and what are the implications of this for a values-led approach to security?

10. What are the political responsibilities of those who create platforms on the Internet?

Philip has set forth his own ideas for the future. These pick up very much on Francis's idea of dialogue and Philip's own experience as a diplomat who has been involved in significant and sensitive negotiations on the international front. These envisage a regional approach to widely based stakeholder dialogue.

As far as Ireland is concerned:

In Ireland’s case, to support a new multilateral, multi-stakeholder forum for ‘region-building’ through a deepening of principles and values would be to build on policy foundations that are already there.

And given what's going on here at the moment I should include the following:

In Laudato Si’ (120), Pope Francis states that ‘concern for the protection of nature is incompatible with the justification of abortion.’

There followed a lively Q&A where Philip gave substantial answers to questions put and to remarks made.

My attitude at a lot of talks is that I'll wait and see the take up on the Q&A and if it looks like dipping, or not even starting, I'll make an intervention. That was my intention on the night here and it seemed to be flagging after one contribution. That didn't surprise me in a way as the talk, although challenging, had been quite comprehensive.

Anyway I decided to put in my tuppence worth and asked Philip for his reaction to the following. Given that there is a need for change in the church, is it not anomalous that those priests at the vanguard of change have been silenced while dissident cardinals doing everything in their power to oppose change are still at large.

Philip's answer, as I understood it, was that this wasn't really on topic as far as his talk was concerned and anyway it would not be acceptable for priests in their official teaching role to be undermining current church teaching.

I think I must have started something as the next comment was particularly critical of the church's treatment of the late Fr. Seán Fagan.

You might like to supplement this post by reading Philip's article in the Irish Times which sets the wider stage and reflects on his own experience.

---

Posts on previous talks:
Michael Jackson, John Coolahan, John McDade SJ, Jim Corkery SJ, John Bruton, Margaret McCurtain, Paul Vallely, Ruth Patterson, Michael Burrows, Richard Clarke, Pat Storey

RESTORATION MINISTRIES

Rev Dr Ruth Patterson
Click on any image for a larger version

St Mary's Roman Catholic church in Haddington Rd, Dublin, is a fine church with some unique features. It is an appropriate backdrop to the Patrick Finn Lecture Series, the most recent of which I attended on Thursday (15/3/2018). The mere fact of that talk was in itself significant.

Ruth Patterson is a Presbyterian Minister in good standing and an Ecumenical Canon of the Church of Ireland, as well as being the Director of Restoration Ministries, an inter-church organisation which helps people find God, and just as importantly each other. The importance of this latter aim cannot be overstated, in particular in the divided communities of Northern Ireland.

It is heartening, when it happens, to see ministers from one denomination preach or lecture in another denomination's church. A complete turnabout from when I was growing up.

Even is recent times the process had its hiccups. A cousin of mine who was a parish priest in a Dublin suburban parish was invited by the local Church of Ireland Rector to address the latter's congregation. The deed was done and the cousin got an enthusiastic reception from the CofI congregation.

The return visit did not work out as smoothly, however. The Catholic congregation proved less than enthusiastic and the cousin was not only mortally embarrassed, he got complained to his bishop. So it's not always plain sailing even in a relatively affluent suburb in the South.

Anyway, to the point. As readers will probably know by now I'm not gone on the God bit. But I can treat it as an idiom and still get to the heart of the matter. Ruth's mission seemed to me to be to humanise people, though she might use the term sanctify. What I would describe as humanising the "other" she would probably call bringing people to an awareness that they are all God's children.

As I see it, we would be talking about the same thing, but with slightly different perspectives and in different dialects.

The basic idea is to reach out to people, get to know them, share with them, and they can then no longer be the "other" and no longer be exploited by those creating and maintaining divisions between people. And this reaching out is an act of personal responsibility.

As Ruth was speaking Seán Fagan's book, What happened to sin?, was flashing in and out of my mind. I'm sure, were he still alive, he and Ruth would get on very well together.

Another thought that occurred to me was how durable that initial reaching out across community barriers, under the EU Peace Programme, proved, even surviving the break down of the cease fire in 1996. The initial "other" had become no longer other.

I see from the Ministries newsletter that Ruth attended the Eucharistic Congress in Dublin in 2012. I wonder might she make the trip down south again in August and give the World Meeting of Families a blast of her inclusivity.

The text of Ruth's reflection with which she rounded off her talk can be viewed here.

St. Patrick also attended the talk
looking down from his perch on the wall

And finally, in it's closing hours, I trust ye all had a good Patrick's Day.

SWIMMING THE TIBER

The allure of Swimming the Tiber
- the joys of receptive ecumenism
(to give the talk its proper title)

Bishop Michael Burrows

Another talk in the excellent series of Patrick Finn Lectures in St. Mary's church, Haddington Road.

I really didn't know what to expect this time round. It was going to be good, that's for sure. Another Protestant Bishop giving a talk in an esteemed Dublin Roman Catholic church. And not just any Protestant Bishop. This man is highly controversial among his own flock.

According to Reform Ireland, his "connivance" at the entry into a same-sex civil partnership of one of his Deans has brought about a huge crisis in the life of the Church of Ireland. The group are calling for Bishop Burrows and Dean Gordon to "depart the Church of Ireland rather than let the Church of Ireland depart from Christ".

And across the pond, the Church of England Newspaper goes so far as to say that the "threat of schism hangs over the Church of Ireland in the wake of these revelations".

Really heavy stuff.

And what was the talk going to be about? I have been aware of attempted ecumenism between the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches since my youth and Vatican II. Doctrinally they would seem to have got nowhere since, though people are a little more civilised in their behaviour towards one another these days.

I have met one man who swam the Tiber in one direction, morphing seamlessly from an Oblate Father into the Church of Ireland Rector in my local area. So far I have not met any of the crowd swimming in the opposite direction.

So how did all this stuff pan out on the night?

Well, it was a most interesting, enjoyable and provocative evening.

Speaking from a Roman Catholic sanctuary, the Bishop decided to highlight what he saw as the relative strengths of the Roman Catholic Church, without, I might add, casting any aspersions on his own flock. Given his apprehension about reporting standards on social media, I have to baldly state, for the avoidance of doubt, that he has no intention himself of dipping his toe in the Tiber in the foreseeable future, or ever for that matter.

So what are these strengths as seen from the perspective of a separated brother?

Well he grouped them under six headings, and I am only going to touch on them here, rather than relay verbatim a talk that included the serious, the dubious and the plain downright funny.

He spoke of prayerfulness, of clarity, of social action and theology, of Mary, of fresh scriptural exegesis, and of Rome itself - its majesty and its relics.

Some of this I felt was a bit double edged having experienced it from the other side myself.

For example, I can understand the appeal of Catholic clarity compared with Protestant fudge, but when that clarity becomes obstinate dogmatic certainty, as it has done since Vatican II, I think the Bishop might find some of the shine going off the clarity soon enough. My own litmus test of this is the Real Presence, where Catholic dogma is now so outdated as to completely defy logic. I did a slightly lighthearted paper on this for the Eucharistic Congress in 2012. The Bishoop's take on it made a lot of sense to me: Protestants believe in the Real Presence but they are not hung up on the mechanics of it.

He was very interesting on the place of Mary in the Catholic church, seeing her as reinforcing the feminine side of our human nature, but he did seem to recognise the danger of the cult of her perpetual virginity and the degree of excessive veneration to which she is subjected in some corners of Catholicism. Mediation is one thing, mediatrixity quite another.

He admired the centrality of social action in Catholic theology and practice, but again was aware of the difficulties of letting go when this might be called for by civil society, for example in the education or health areas.

He detected a freshness of scriptural exegesis, which appealed to him, and which I have to say I have detected myself, but my own feeling is that it is still far too limited and starting from a very low base.

On prayerfulness, he seemed to detect a higher degree of this in Roman Catholic rather than Church of Ireland services where the emphasis might be a little more on the aesthetic, such as the hymns. But his overall anxiety, covering both denominations was to make the ceremonies more relevant, participative and attractive. This may well be a long haul for both denominations.

He told how his young son is in the habit of rating his father's sermons and recently gave him a two out of ten. That's one way of having your feet kept on the ground.

The talk was followed by an interesting Q&A during which the Bishop seemed to be in his element. This covered such items as aesthetics and the ordinariat and it was followed by many one-to-ones over a cuppa afterwards.

There was just one thing which really upset me during the evening. The attendance was very poor, and given the high standard of the talks in the series, whether from a religious or a purely secular perspective, there are a lot of people out there who just don't know what they are missing.

The Public Square

Archbishop Richard Clarke of Armagh
Click on any image for a larger version

Another in the excellent Patrick Finn Lecture Series in St. Mary's in Haddington Road. This time the title was "The Church in the Irish Public Square". It was a pretty provocative title and the talk certainly lived up to it.

The speaker was Archbishop Richard Clarke of Armagh and he didn't waste any time putting it up to his audience. He kicked off by deploring the way the media, in response to commercial pressures, were effectively dumbing down content to mere soundbytes and thus depriving us of the possibility of any sort of subtle conversations in that forum. And when it came to social media the content became more aggressive and nasty.

So far so good. But if you thought this was going to develop into a rant about how the media are not paying due attention to the teaching and views of the church you were in for a shock.

The church, he said, had no God given right to be heard in the Irish public square. It had to earn that right by putting its views in a way that appealed to both reason and emotion and it had to do this with more than a pinch of passion.

The days of preaching at civil society from the pulpit were gone. The case had to be argued in terms of the common good and, perish the thought, the church had to listen respectfully to the views of others and, in the heel of the hunt, be prepared to change its own views where the argument could not be sustained.

That is not to say that the ramblings of every idiot out there had to be given the same weight as reasoned and considered views. There had to be some element of discrimination as well and this was unfortunately lacking in much of current media coverage.

Pointing out that the Christian traditions agreed on more that they disputed, he felt there was a lot to be said in them coordinating their views in advance when it came to presenting them in the public square. He mentioned a recent presentation he did, along with RC Archbishop Eamon Martin, on the Flesh and Blood campaign. This was about organ and blood donation and it didn't get a lot of media coverage. He figured that if the two Archbishops had instead ended up with fisticuffs the coverage would have been extensive, as the media thrive on confrontation but find the good news lacking in appeal.

The above is only a small part of what the Archbishop had to say and it is in my own paraphrasing. His presentation was compelling and well crafted and the content was inspiring. Definitely one of the highlights of this already excellent lecture series.

Hopefully, the text will appear soon in an issue of Doctrine and Life and you will be able to judge for yourself.

Souvenir poster

Hell & High Water

John Horgan
Click on any image for a larger version

John Horgan treated us to another talk in the Patrick Flynn Lecture Series on last Thursday evening (19/2/2015). His theme was the church and the media with particular reference to the Furrow magazine under the editorship of its founder Canon J G McGarry. His chosen title was "Between Hell and High Water" which well reflects that turbulent period and the delicate path navigated by a progressive priest operating in the hinterland of Archbishop John Charles McQuaid.

The sub-title for the talk was "the Furrow and its context 1950-1977". This period began with Canon McGarry's founding of The Furrow and ended with his death in a motor accident. Horgan's description of the Canon:

McGarry himself could have passed, at first glance, for a run-of-the-mill rural parish priest. But behind a craggy exterior, which could well have fitted into a vacant slot on Mount Rushmore, there lurked a keen intelligence, a highly developed sense of strategy, a gift for language, and an utterly authentic humility which operated, at times, to surprise and even disarm his critics.

I am only too aware of the oppressiveness of this period, and particularly the earlier part of it. In his book "The Irish and Catholic Power", Paul Blanshard documents the extent to which the Roman Catholic Church dictated to the State, and, of course, within the church itself that dictatorship was absolute. In that regard, I was interested to hear Horgan mention the three bêtes noirs bishops of my day. John Charles McQuaid, the conservative control freak who used his excellent organisational skills to capture for the church the civil organisation of his diocese, and to some extent that of the whole country. Then there was Connie Lucey, the gatekeeper, who ensured the highest level of theological orthodoxy imaginable. And finally Michael Browne, former Professor of Moral Theology in Maynooth and subsequently Bishop of Galway, from where he succeeded in annoying the nation. He wasn't known as Cross Michael for nothing.

I was also interested to hear Horgan mention, among others, the progressive theologian Gregory Baum, who had to skirt the Dublin diocese on his visit to this country in the sixties. I mentioned most of these people myself when I was guest speaker at UCD's L&H at a time when there was still some hope that the Vatican Council was opening up the Roman Catholic Church and allowing it to catch up on some four hundred years of missed opportunities.

In those days material published under church auspices or by clerics had to be vetted by church censors. The Nihil Obstat was the first step and the process culminated with an Imprimatur. The Furrow carried such stamps of ecclesiastical vetting and permissions up to 1976 when, having consulted the editors of other similar publications, McGarry just dropped the practice, thus declaring, albeit sotto voce, The Furrow's independence. Mind you, I was never impressed with those labels after I saw them on a ridiculous novena to St. Joseph.

McGarry effectively got away with murder in the context of his time. When Horgan asked him how he managed to do this, his answer was: "the thing is you can say almost anything you want as long as you say it with style".

Canon J G McGarry presents the President's Birthday gift
of £100 to Mrs. Bridget Maughan, Lisbane,
on the occasion of her 100th birthday.
(Photo: by courtesy of the McGuire family
Source: Annagh Magazine, Christmas 1978)

McGarry left Maynooth in 1969 to become parish priest of Ballyhaunis (my own father's birthplace) where he was held in high regard for his pastoral care of, and his respect for his parishioners. An appreciation, written by Aine McEvoy in 1978, on the first anniversary of his death, is replete with tributes from sorrowing and grateful parishioners, particularly the old and the infirm. And the thing that comes across most in them is McGarry's caring and his genuine humility.

These tributes reminded me of those that poured in for Fr. Tony Flannery when the Vatican's Inquisition (CDF to you) silenced him. I wondered if the two men might have a lot in common.

Felix Larkin

John Horgan was introduced by Felix Larkin. Felix is co-editor of a recently published book "Periodicals and Journalism in Twentieth Century Ireland - Writing Against the Grain" to which Horgan has contributed a well crafted essay on "The Furrow: navigating the rapids, 1950-77". The essay details a number of McGarry's run ins with the hierarchy, but interestingly enough, a lot of the efforts at censoring The Furrow's clerical contributors came from those contributors' own superiors. Horgan touched on a number of these in his talk.

Both the essay and the talk are a massive tribute to McGarry, a giant of his times, but a man who doesn't even have a Wikipedia page.

Souvenir poster

An appreciation by Louis McRedmond August 1977 2nd item on page.

Beating the Odds

Bishop Pat Storey
Click on any image for a larger version

Last evening saw the first talk in the current session of the excellent Patrick Finn Lecture Series in St. Mary's church, Haddington Road, Dublin. I have blogged some of the earlier talks in this series, which was started in 2006 by the then parish priest. The series was named in his honour after his death. Speakers have ranged through bishops, priests, nuns, politicians, academics and philosophers. The standard has been high and the contents no-holds-barred.

This talk was a piece of history of itself. The first mainstream female bishop on these islands talking about her life, hopes and faith in one of the most prestigious Roman Catholic churches in town.

And Bishop Pat Storey didn't disappoint. She recounted her story to a very enthusiastic audience who all clearly appreciated the significance of the occasion.

She originally wanted to be an air hostess like her glamorous aunt, but then she married Rev Earl Storey, vicar of Crinken in Bray, became an Anglican priest herself, commuting to Ballymena, and ended up ministering and living in Derry which she grew to love.

Then she got elected Bishop of Meath and, as she related it, was the only such electee to ever ask for time to consider the offer. It was a big wrench for the family. She would be moving to Maynooth with her husband and they would be leaving their, now adult, children behind in Derry. She took the job and hasn't looked back during the year since she joined "the management" of the Church of Ireland.

Almost eclipsed by the Holy Spirit

She sees herself as an ordinary person devoid of pomposity and dedicated to helping to reverse the church's decline in fortunes and fall in attendances. This is not an end in itself, but she sees it as a necessary element in bringing Jesus's message into people's lives and improving their lot.

She asks the question: why have a church at all? What does it bring to the table? Her answer goes back to basics, to the early church and even that of her own youth. Community. And that is the challenge for today's church - to foster real communities across all age groups.

She gave examples of particular programmes that have been successful in attracting new members, or bringing back lapsed members, to the church. Some of them are based on sharing activities which are not necessarily religious or spiritual as such, but they bring people together in a conducive atmosphere. Spiritual growth can then come further along the road.

The talk was followed by a vigorous Q&A session in which she was asked her views on the appeal of Islam, the training of young clerics, the need for equal participation of women in the power structures of the church, and the lack of protest by Western Christian hierarchies at the legality of burning the Bible in Malaya. Her answers were generally to the point but nonetheless diplomatic.

I was almost tempted to sponsor her for membership of the Association of Catholic Priests, but that would be a bit cheeky coming from someone who, at the age of four, had aspirations to becoming a bishop but now finds himself in the ranks of the unbelievers.

St. Mary's magnificent interior

Souvenir poster of this historic occasion

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.

---

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

Click any image for a larger version

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.


______________________________________________

Posts on previous talks:

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

Missio et Spes

Another in the series of Patrick Finn Lectures, this one by the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, Michael Jackson.

The title of the talk was "Mission and Hope" and as far as I could make out it was about what should be the mission of a Christian church in the world today and whether it was likely to be fulfilled. The talk was described as brilliant by those better qualified than me to judge. I couldn't quite get a fix on it. Perhaps I'd need to have been coming from a perspective of faith rather than that of an unbeliever, or perhaps the Bishop's style is just not my cup of tea.

What I did feel, however, was that the very presence of this Protestant Archbishop in this Roman Catholic church, addressing a Roman Catholic congregation from within the sanctuary, was something very positive.

I have commented elsewhere on what I perceived as the openness of the Church of Ireland, of which I have first hand experience (here and here). The reciprocal openness of the Roman Catholic Church on this occasion must surely be welcomed. It's not all that long ago since my cousin, then a Parish Priest, was complained to his Bishop for letting a Church of Ireland Rector address his congregation from within the sanctuary.

Anyway, what I did pick up was that the Archbishop felt there was a need and a place for a particularly religious mission both at home and abroad over and above the secular humanitarian activities of NGOs and the State. The nature of that mission had changed over time and the challenge now was to ensure that it was relevant to the times we live in and that it makes a positive contribution to the human condition.

Again there was a lively Q&A session in the course of which the Archbishop was asked his view on the Ordinariate created within the Roman Catholic Church, the express purpose of which was to facilitate those Church of England priests who did not want to stay in their own church because it ordained women to the priesthood. The Archbishop considered it a disaster for its likely effect on ecumenism and the long term interest of both the churches concerned.

At the beginning of the talk, the Archbishop had put his audience at ease when he recounted how, passing the church recently, he came face to face with himself on the railings. You too can see what he saw, below.


Click for larger image

Move over, Jesus

Another in the excellent series of Patrick Finn talks in St. Mary's, Haddington Road.

This time it was John Coolahan former Professor of Education in NUI Maynooth, who spoke on “The Forum on School Patronage and its outcomes”. John was the chair of the Forum and you can gen up on his background here.

He started by outlining the remarkable sytem which the British introduced in the 1830s. This was intended to deal with education in a society which was bitterly divided, primarily on religious grounds. It envisaged integrated education (including moral) for all, supplemented by separate modules for religious formation which catered for the different denominations. Technically, this system remained up to independence but in the meantime, for all practical purposes, it had become strictly denominational. After independence the denominational nature of the system was formally recognised. This was a formal recognition that the ethos of the particular denomination in question was to permeate all that school's activities including the curriculum. You can get some good background from John's book here.

So, is there a problem today with patronage and the denominational nature of the system?

In terms of human, legal and constitutional rights there has always been a problem but this was on a relatively small scale. It only began to be recognised in a serious way in 1960s and then only gradually. Individuals and groups of parents started setting up alternative schools but it was a difficult path.

Formal State attempts to deal with it started in the 1990s but lost momentum.

Problems were exacerbated by the Celtic Tiger which contributed to a school population covering a much wider range of faiths and strengthened the trend towards no religion or unbelief.

Now the State has finally got around to tackling it again in a follow-up to promises in the current Programme for Government. The Government established a Forum to consult stakeholders and advise on how to tackle the problem. Its terms of reference were essentially to come up with an approach which built on existing structures to make them, insofar as possible, compatible with the constitutional and legal rights of all stakeholders. You can find the Forum's report here.

John outlined, very briefly, how they were attempting to approach the problem via three categories of schools/situations.

• Areas where there is an expanding population have flexibility as it is likely that new schools will be built
• Existing multischool areas with stable populations will probably need divesting of some sort.
• "Stand alone" schools will have to adapt to a multifaith (and none) environment.

One element which would be present right across the system would be what is known as Education about Religion and Beliefs (ERB). The purpose of this is not just to inform pupils about other belief systems but to foster a respect for adherents of such religions and beliefs

He commented that it was remarkable how the primary sector has quietly coped to date with the rapid transition to a multifaith multi-ethnic pupil body. This gives great hope for the future. It testifies to a generousity of spirit and a great degree of common sense in the sector, qualities that will be needed in buckets if the current problems are to be satisfactorily solved.

You will have gathered from reading some of the links above that John appears to be the ideal person to to get the consensus and facilitate the compromises needed on all sides. I have no experience of the primary education sector, other than having come through it in the distant past, but you could feel the respect coming from the audience, many of whom were intimately involved in the sector and are grappling with these problems.

Q&A
There was a lively Q&A after the talk and an equally lively discussion in the Green Room afterwards. I didn't follow all of the remarks due to lack of familiarity with the current state of the sector.

I said that, coming from a 1950s background in primary school, I wondered if John had come across either of the following two issues as stumbling blocks in reforming the sector: (i) the sort of dogma in the Roman Catholic Church typified by the idea that "outside the church there is no salvation" and the RCC idea that it is a cut above the others, and (ii) the issue of ownership, where most of the funding for the real estate had come from the State/taxpayer but the assets were in religious ownership.

In his response it was clear that these issues had arisen, but, at the same time it was clear that, given a constructive approach and a determination to avoid confrontation, they would not prove insuperable in bona fide efforts to reorganise the sector.

A member of the audience pointed out that there was a perception out there that a Roman Catholic teacher would not be capable of imparting ERB due to the strength of their own beliefs.

John responded that this sort of thing was already happening all the time. Teachers are capable of taking a professional approach to this, including absolutely avoiding undermining any child's belief in its own (or parents) belief system(s). Teachers, of all persuasions and none, are doing this every day of the week.

__________________________________________

Posts on previous talks: John McDade SJ, Jim Corkery SJ, John Bruton

Ethics in Politics

This is the magnificent church of St. Mary in Dublin's Haddington Road. When Fr. Paddy Finn came in as Parish Priest he set about heating, lighting and decorating the church, and it is a credit to him.

It was not the only thing he did. He initiated a series of evening lectures which have been of a consistently high standard, of interest not only to Roman Catholics, but to other denominations and even non-believers. He has been honoured by the series being christened from here on in as The Patrick Finn Lectures.

I have attended a number of these and have already blogged on two of them: John McDade and Jim Corkery.

This is the magnificent lectern in the sanctuary, from behind which the lectures are delivered. Appropriately enough the speakers deliver their wisdom off the back of the Holy Ghost.

The title of Last night's lecture was "The Economic and Political Crises in Europe – A Christian Perspective" and the theme revolved around the place of ethics in politics and in the marketplace.

The speaker was John Bruton, former Finance Minister, Taoiseach and EU Ambassador to the USA. He explained that, having been an altar boy in his youth, and being imbued with the sanctity of the sanctuary, he ran the risk of being tongue-tied if he used the lectern, so he chose to deliver his talk from the lay side of the altar rails.

The question he asked boiled down to whether a person's religion, in this case Roman Catholicism, should have any bearing on their participation in politics or in the marketplace.

His thesis was that it is impossible to run a sustainable state or market by regulation alone. If people confined their participation to minimum observation of the law, the whole thing would fall apart. There had to be an added element of trust involved and that is where the ethics came in. For it all to work, most people had to behave reasonably and in good faith. In the case of believers, their ethics usually came through their religious affiliation or belief. So, in the case of Christians, this was the Christian perspective or response.

He was very careful not to imply that the response of non-Christians or unbelievers need be in any way inferior to the Christian one. Simply that the source of the ethics would be different.

Generally speaking people should be held accountable for their actions in this life and should be punished for their misdeeds. But, that done, there should always be an element of forgiveness to follow. People were entitled to a second chance and simply filling the prisons did nothing to improve the quality of society. He did point out, however, that he felt a belief in the next life did bring an extra dimension of accountability into people's actions in this life.

He criticised the more extreme interpretations of "choice" and "freedom" which prevail in many quarters today. He emphasised the constraints which should apply in favour of "community" and "human rights", noting the more recent emphasis on this aspect of "communion" in the Roman Catholic Church. He saw the Mass as a social activity. He instanced the case, in the past, of attendees saying the rosary during Mass as an example of the absence of participation.

The talk was followed by a lively Q&A session, in the course of which Mr. Bruton said he feared the UK could talk itself into leaving the EU, a move which would not be to its advantage at all. He also reminded Roman Catholics that they were not used to having to argue their case in a scientific or rational environment. To an extent hierarchical pronouncements had filled this void, but they would now have to come to grips with the secular environment in which they found themselves. He didn't think that this should be an insurmountable problem, however, as much of what Christianity stood for could equally be argued from a scientific or rational basis.

His comment on the (former) power of hierarchical edicts, and the consequent gaps in the rational armoury of many Roman Catholics, resonated with me.

The longer and more complex version of Mr. Bruton's thoughts above can be found in his contribution to the recent International Eucharistic Congress.

Watch your Back

Reflections on a talk by Fr. Jim Corkery SJ, entitled

“Speak Freely - but watch your back”
Dissent and dissenters in the Catholic Church today
This is one of a series of lectures in St. Mary's RC Church, Haddington Road. The lectures are open to all and are of a high quality. They were instituted some years ago by the Parish Priest, Fr. Paddy Finn, and the series will henceforth be known as the Patrick Finn Lectures in his honour.

Fr. Corkery's talk was subtle and complex and I would need a lot of time and a script in front of me to fully come to terms with it. He was walking a tricky line on a subject that is controversial, sensitive, and positively dangerous for those dealing with it from within the current Roman Catholic Church.

So I am not going to attempt to convey what he actually said. Instead, I will confine myself to setting out what I took away from the lecture. So this is a subjective account for which Fr. Corkery can not be held entirely responsible. [CDF please note]

Traditionally "dissent" has involved people who wish to bring down the institution from which they dissent. But there is now a new kind of dissent within the RCC which aims at redeeming, or improving, the institution itself. The term has occurred with increasing frequency in official church documents from only as recently as the 1990s.

A careful analysis of church documents suggests that it is in order to freely undertake research into matters doctrinal and theological provided this does not result in public dissent. However, in the modern age of mass communications and intrusive journalism, it is very hard, if not impossible, to keep things under wraps, so the private eventually becomes the public.

You might therefore think that the instruction injuncts complete silence where the results of any such research appear to conflict with the current teaching of the church (the mysterious magisterium).

However, if you really put your mind to it, it's not that simple.

In the first place, what is the magisterium. There are varying levels of certainty and compulsion involved in church teaching. There's the truly infallible stuff, requiring the presence of 5 conditions, including the formal declaration of the infallibility of the teaching concerned. The Pope can teach infallibly, under these conditions. And this has only been resorted to twice in church history (the immaculate conception and the assumption). Ecumenical Councils of the church can also teach doctrines infallibly. Then there are the secondary objects of infallibility, which I would term infallible derivatives, which must be firmly accepted and held. And finally there is a whole lot of other stuff, which is less important. This last category would arguably include Humanae Vitae which is an encyclical and belongs to the ordinary papal magisterium.

So if you have a problem you can have a go at limiting the range of the compulsory magisterium. To assist you here, you should bear in mind that earlier church teachings on the acceptability of slavery and on there being no salvation outside the church itself, which were vehemently imposed on the faithful, have, in fact, changed over time. Also, from being forbidden to engage in serious theological conversation with our heretic Protestant brethern, we are now encouraged to enter positive dialogue with them.

If challenging the breadth of the magisterium doesn't work, you can quibble over the question of public dissent. This is where the principle of double effect comes into play. As long as you can show you didn't set out to create a public fuss, you just might be able to construct a workable defence.

As the lecture was given on the 50th anniversary, to the day, of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, I had better not leave that out. One of the features of that Council was substitution of the hand me down hierarchical model of the church with a more inclusive and broader concept of the discerning of truth, with the Holy Spirit not simply revealing the divine will to the Pope in the privacy of his study, but rather operating in a more diffuse manner through the whole church. This is the idea of the church as the People of God and it carries with it the dangerous idea of reception (ie widespread acceptance) as a criterion for establishing truth. Tricky stuff, you'll have to admit. And it was sufficiently vague at the time to allow the Curia and the Pope to effectively ignore the Council and slide back into the old ways. However, now, 50 years later, questions are being asked.

So where does all this leave us. Some brave souls feel that the spirit of Vatican II is capable of being reclaimed and they are attempting to lead the church (including the ordinary faithful) along this path. Sadly, the silencing of many in this community of optimists suggests that those who currently hold the reins of power will not give it up without a bitter fight. They are already resorting to the modern equivalent of the inquisition.

So, in an attempt to confuse the enemy, I have awarded myself a NIHIL OBSTAT and an IMPRIMATUR. I understand, however, that, these days, even possession of valid versions of these splendid artifacts may not be a sufficient defence against Holy Supergag Orders from Vatican HQ.

So, speak freely, but watch your back.