An extract from my Christmas Morning Homily

And he dwelt among us.  Literally, in the Greek, it says, he set up His tent among us.  He threw his lot in with us.  It wasn’t just that he passed through – making an appearance and then vanishing like a shooting-star making its way across the heavens.  That would make the Incarnation, the Word becoming Flesh, a wonder – something to be commemorated, but not the mystery we celebrate today.  No, He became one of our tribe in such a way that our sufferings are His sufferings, our victories are His victories.  When he ascends to the right hand of the Father, it is not to abandon us, but rather, to lead us on that same journey.  The manner of His coming shows what He intends.  He wasn’t born in a palace or behind closed doors.  He wasn’t insulated from the hardships of life.  He came among us in a stable where poor shepherds and wise Kings found an equal welcome.  He came to us as a child – so that instead of putting fear into our hearts, He might draw love out of them instead. 

To all who did accept Him, he gave power to become children of God.  That is why we rejoice today.  He didn’t just come among us as a teacher or a guide.  He came to transform us – to make us children of God.  Beginning with the love and wonder we feel when we gaze on Him in the Nativity scene, He wants to transform our entire being – to turn our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh, to bind up our wounds, to give us the strength to walk righteously and to restore our friendship with the Father.  This day, we see the Saviour who has come to search for us, the one who wants to spend time with us.  Come, therefore, and let us find him.  Let us adore Him who is so great.  Let us spend time with Him in prayer.  Let us receive Him in the Eucharist.  Let us know His reconciliation.  Let us see his Glory and learn from his humility.  Let us welcome the One who is the true light.

The mask slips...

From Saturday's Irish Times, Senator Joe O'Toole displays his anti-Catholic bigotry:

“One mention of pregnancy termination and the church leadership is galvanised into action. The Minister for Foreign Affairs should be asked to send a cable to Armagh on where it is we stand, and let the cobbler stick to his last. They can do the praying up there and we’ll do the legislating down here, thanks very much.”
As John Hanafin (FF) had stated, we were an independent republic, and we would do our own business, added Mr O’Toole. “We won’t be lectured to by any fundamentalist whether he is wearing a red hat in Armagh or a white hat in the Vatican . . . This is not an issue of abortion. This is an issue of protecting pregnant women whose lives are in danger.

One wonders whether such discourse about any other religious group would be tolerated? That reference to the Minister of Foreign Affairs sending a cable to the North betrays a less than respectful attitude to our brethern on the other side of the border. One wonders whether Senator O'Toole also has a gripe about the fact that our current President is a Northerner? (I could also be pedantic and point out that Cardinal Brady is a Southerner by birth and that his diocese straddles the border.)
Pope Benedict very presciently noted last week:

There also exist – as I have said – more sophisticated forms of hostility to religion which, in Western countries, occasionally find expression in a denial of history and the rejection of religious symbols which reflect the identity and the culture of the majority of citizens. Often these forms of hostility also foster hatred and prejudice; they are inconsistent with a serene and balanced vision of pluralism and the secularity of institutions, to say nothing of the fact that coming generations risk losing contact with the priceless spiritual heritage of their countries.
[snip]
I also express my hope that in the West, and especially in Europe, there will be an end to hostility and prejudice against Christians because they are resolved to orient their lives in a way consistent with the values and principles expressed in the Gospel.

Catholics should expect more of this. Don't let the politicians get away with it.

A curate's egg from the Irish Catholic...

The editorial in the Irish Catholic is somewhat of a mixed bag this week - Garry O'Sullivan does make a good point about the usefulness of a more visible act of penance on behalf of the Irish hierarchy.
However, his rather unfocussed anger draws in a whole range of other issues which muddy the waters significantly and which generate a lot of unnecessary heat.
I'm particularly disappointed by his handling of the Bishops' recent pastoral letter on Friday penances (PDF). 
He complains:

Yet the leaflet makes no mention of why Pope Benedict called for penance. No mention of abuse. Just silence on the anniversary of the Murphy Report from the collective group. Remember this moment well because this is the moment that the institutional Church in Ireland picked itself up, dusted itself off and went back to business as usual.
Reading the leaflet, the language is the language of a Church that has long passed. There is no life, no Christ, no Good News in the language used, it's all penance and no explanation why we should be so penitential? What exactly are Christ's faithful in Ireland doing penance for? For the sins of paedophiles? For the bishops who covered up? For the remaining bishops? Where are they today? Certainly not out there leading by example but ducking and diving as usual.

Garry misses the point here - and I don't think that he's understood the Pope's letter properly. It's quite clear from the Holy Father's letter that it's not a question of doing penance specifically for the sins of paedophiles or bishops. What the Pope explicitly asked for was to offer our penances for the following intention: "to obtain the grace of healing and renewal for the Church in Ireland." What Garry fails to appreciate is that the Friday penance is something which should have been part of our life as Catholics long before the Pope's letter to us - it should be part of normal Catholic life and is part of the Church's discipline (see Canons 1249-1253). I suspect that most Irish Catholics were aware that abstaining from meat on Fridays was no longer strictly obligatory - but I doubt that more that one in fifty were aware that they should have been doing some form of penance on Fridays - either the traditional abstaining from meat or substituting another penance in its place.


I really fail to understand what Garry O'Sullivan means by the leaflet being written in "the language of a Church that has long passed" or that "[t]here is no life, no Christ, no Good News in the language used." The letter explains:

Penance is an essential part of the lives of all Christ’s faithful. It arises from the Lord’s call to conversion and repentance.
We do penance in memory of the passion and death of
the Lord,
* as a sharing in Christ’s suffering,
* as an expression of inner conversion,
* as a form of reparation for sin.

What's so objectionable about that? Christ's public ministry is preceded by the great figure of John the Baptist whose great call is to repentance and conversion. Christ's first public act is - although He Himself was sinless - was to submit to the penitential Baptism of John.
Penance (and particularly fasting) as a means of uniting ourselves to Christ's suffering, as an act of remembrance of Christ's sacrifice, as an act of reparation and as a motivator and expression of interior renewal is central to the Christian tradition. Maybe making a sacrifice for Christ and making some feeble gesture aimed at union with Christ crucified is hardly something we can set aside because it doesn't measure up to some kind of pie-in-the-sky, happy-clappy idea of what the journey of faith is about. A more sober, realistic assessment of the human condition rooted in the wisdom of the great spiritual writers will see the absolute necessity of penance both as a discipline of the Church and as something that the ordinary Christian would eagerly embrace as being part of the fabric of Christian life.

I fail to see how - post-Murphy - the Irish Church can aim for renewal without a recognition for the need for penance as part of the ordinary Christian life. Having come face to face with the sins and weaknesses of abusers, those who enabled abuse, those cover-up abuse and those who lacked the courage to speak out, we should realise more that ever that a Gospel of optimism and shiny-lights is insufficent. Our Friday penance should be a reminder to us of our weakness, a reminder of our need to cling to Christ-crucified, a reminder to us to remain spiritually alert, a reminder to us that we should voluntarily seek solidarity with those who suffer and a reminder to us of our humble dependence on the Lord. It is also a reminder to us that the vigour and the renewal of the Church is not unrelated to the holiness and asceticism of her members. The call for a more humble Church makes little sense if Catholics are too stiff-necked to be penitential. 

I'm also puzzled by the following paragraph in the editorial -

We've seen it recently - when can someone with Aids use a condom? The debate is like the supposed theological debate of the Middle Ages - ''How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?'' The mother of a priest who was in the thick of the resignations and general chaos in the Irish Church post-Murphy Report made a fascinating point to me recently. ''How could a Church'', she asked, ''which was so interested in controlling condoms and making sure everyone behaved in the bedroom as they the Church said was the proper way to behave, could then turn around and give a free pass to those who were molesting children?''

At best, it strikes me as glib. Why bring in the whole debate about the Pope's remarks about condoms? That's hardly the fault of the Irish Church or the Irish Bishops. The Good News of the Church's teaching about sexuality is implicitly trivialised... and given the fact that the debate involves literally involves matters of (physical and spiritual) life and death, I don't think it should be cheaply used to take a potshot at the Bishops.

In fairness to Garry, it's important that he's raising his voice at this time. It would be interesting to hear an episcopal response to what he had to say. It's debatable whether the 1st anniversary of the Murphy Report is the appropriate time for the Irish hierarchy as a whole to make a statement. Perhaps there's more happening at a local level, more things happening quietly than this editorial would suggest. However, it's so unfortunate that the some of the main points of this editorial seem, in my estimation, at least, to miss the mark.