That Fornication Speech...

In yesterday's parliamentary debate on Abortion legislation in the Dáil, the speech of Mayo TD Michelle Mulherin attracted the most attention. Or, to be more precise, her use of a single word, namely "fornication" attracted people's attention.  It's not a word one hears too often, but it is usefully defined in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

Fornication is carnal union between an unmarried man and an unmarried woman. It is gravely contrary to the dignity of persons and of human sexuality which is naturally ordered to the good of spouses and the generation and education of children. Moreover, it is a grave scandal when there is corruption of the young.

Anyway, Miss Mulherin said:

Abortion as murder, therefore sin, which is the religious argument, is no more sinful, from a scriptural point of view, than all other sins we don’t legislate against, like greed, hate and fornication. The latter, being fornication, I would say, is probably the single most likely cause of unwanted pregnancies in this country.

Now, fornication isn't a politically correct word, so this caused all kinds of uproar.  (It also caused Deputy Luke 'Ming' Flanagan to exclaim, "Hurrah for fornication," which could well serve as his next election slogan.) And even though fornication is a perfectly precise and accurate word for a particular sin, it's one that I don't use very often myself because it has an inflammatory effect which detracts from the calm and rational discussion of things.
Anyway, her speech - or at least the reported parts of it - have led to her being subjected to all kinds of online mockery, implying that she's typical of the pro-life Catholic crowd who want to send Ireland into an age of pre-enlightenment darkness.  However, if one actually goes to the bother of reading her speech - a thoroughly confusing contribution - it seems to me as though she doesn't represent mainstream pro-life thinking or Catholic thought and that her position on abortion seems to be a personal opposition, but an unwillingness to legislate for its illegality.  Indeed, reading many of the contributions made to the Dáil yesterday and the day before, many of them seem to base their opposition to Clare Daly's bill on pragmatic political grounds rather than on a principled concern for the life of the unborn.

On another online forum, a commentator made the astute remark about Mulherin's speech that it was written as though "two people with opposing view took turns writing paragraphs."
She starts by welcoming the debate and her concern for the Irish women who travel abroad for abortions.  Then she says:

We are moving and have moved away from an Ireland where morality was shoved down people’s throats. The question is whether responsibility for people’s moral conduct falls on the shoulders of Government or whether we go down the road of talking about the personal responsibility of the individuals involved.

She's raising a valid question here - albeit in an unsatisfactory manner.  One of the questions faced by legislators is the extent to which morality or good behaviour should be legislated for.  It seems self evident that the state should be allowed to forbid murder or kidnap or theft.  These seem to be the easy cases. Likewise, there is little appetite in modern Western democracies for the State to legislate to outlaw sexual misbehaviour in cases where consent can be responsibly given.   However, there are tougher questions.  What restrictions should the State place on cigarette smoking, drunkenness or pornography? What about drug-taking? The evaluation of what the State and criminal law can and can't do is a non-trivial question.  And whilst morality is often used in a pejorative sense (Is Mulherin doing this?), a legislator MUST reason in moral terms in order to decide what the State does or does not have the right to do.  
Questions of justice are moral questions, as are questions of human rights.  We are comfortable making the moral judgement that such-and-such a foreign state should not imprison political prisoners.  Whether we like it or not, that is a form of moral decision.  Likewise, the pro-life movement would argue that the question of what protection should be afforded to the unborn child is, of course, a moral one, but it is precisely the kind of moral question which the State must get involved in order to justly protect the human rights of mother and child.
Mulherin then goes on to make the fair point that hard cases make bad law.  Anyone with an iota of life experience know that difficult situations arise where we are torn apart by a whole nexus of competing thoughts, emotions and principles. Legal and moral decision making isn't easy and even though particular cases may sway us one way or the other, careful legislation cannot be based solely on particular "hard cases" without regard for underlying principles. She follows this argument (which you could imagine being taken from a pro-life briefing paper) with the following paragraph:

I will be voting against the Bill, which I believe is untimely. However, it does open a debate and I welcome that aspect. There are some questions I would raise during the debate. The major objection to abortion in Ireland is religious but the rest of the Western world has no objections in this way. In the book Free and Female, dating from some decades back, Ms Barbara Seaman put abortion as part of the lifelong struggle of women for effective contraception and to be able to take control of their own bodily integrity. That is both liberal and feminist. When we legislate, we do it with an all-inclusive paradigm for our society. In short, it is not for the majority alone.

Here she sounds, not like a conservative religious pro-lifer, but rather like someone in favour of enshrining abortion rights in legislation.  Her objection to the Daly bill is a question of timing. Her statement about Ireland's objection to abortion being uniquely religious is somewhat of a puzzler.  Yes, the vast majority of those who oppose the introduction of abortion to Ireland are Catholic and are motivated by their faith.  I suspect however that in the Western world, religiously motivated opposition to abortion is far from being uniquely Irish.  (Malta? Poland? The USA?)


However, even though religious people are opposed to abortion, their grounds for doing so are far from being simply religious. It's a question of human rights and the extent and manner to which human life should be protected by the State.  Most arguments against abortion are rooted in philosophical and scientific issues, rather than questions of scriptural interpretation and there are a fair number of agnostics and atheists who make common cause with their religious fellow-citizens in arguing for the right to life.In Catholic terms, opposition to abortion is rooted in the Natural Law and is not a religious stricture which we seek to impose on society, but rather a genuine injustice against another human being which the State has the right and responsibility to prevent. Our opposition to abortion is not akin to our suggesting that everyone should go to Mass on Sundays or face imprisonment, but is based on the exact same principles as the treatment of theft or kidnapping as illegal activities.

Anyway, having put forward an argument which seems to come from the pro-choice playbook, Mulherin then makes a sort of personal profession of faith which seems to be somewhat of a non sequitur: 

I am against abortion in any form. The grace of God is so liberating and provides so many options to get the best out of life despite our fallen nature, and we all have that. Having said that, it is an ideal to aim for. In an ideal world, there would be no unwanted pregnancies and no unwanted babies. However, we are far from living in an ideal world. An honest and a scriptural view is that things are getting harder for people, so what then for the weak in our society?

I'm not sure what Deputy Mulherin's religious background is. Certainly a belief in original sin and the power of God's grace is Catholic teaching, even if some of my online correspondents detect a US-style evangelical accent in her credo.  (I'm a fan of St Augustine & don't think we Catholics think enough about grace or original sin.)  She also makes a clear (personal?) statement of opposition to abortion, but leaves it unclear as to how that opposition should inform her legislative duties.  Likewise, her description of our less-than-ideal world raises questions... Does she mean to imply that because the world is fallen or imperfect that somehow we are held back from striving for the best because it is unattainable?  Are good and evil only relative categories in a less-than-ideal world?  Her self-expression is so unclear that it's hard to see what she's really getting at, but it doesn't sit well with me.  (That thing about "an honest and scriptural view" sounds like something an American fundamentalist would say.)Her next paragraphs speak about the 1st World becoming "freer and more autonomous." She presents a narrative of Ireland moving from a society legislating according to religious principles to one where such legislation is now unthinkable.  She then makes the statement which seems to give the clearest insight into her thinking:

Perhaps the Irish, like the rest of the world, are maturing to the point that they can be trusted with freedom of choice. In fact, although divorce became legal, marriage still remains very popular in Ireland and throughout the world, including the USA. It could be argued that when people are free to abort, they will fight harder to keep their unborn babies by choice and they will value their pregnancies. For those who do not, and I believe them a minority, they will be free to choose what to do with no legal pressure. In other words, any legislation will not make a good Catholic choose abortion against her conscience.

 Deputy Mulherin presents an Ireland where there is "freedom of choice" as being a more mature place.  She seems to loom forward to the day when the minority who do not "value their pregnancies" will be "free to choose what to do with no legal pressure." Despite all the controversy surrounding her, it seems to me that Deputy Mulhern falls into the camp of those who are personally opposed to abortion but who do not want to legislatively forbid it. So, all the mockery of her as representing religious pro-lifers is mis-directed. She sounds a lot more "pro-choice" than "pro-life."
  Finally, she concludes with her notorious fornication paragraph:

Abortion as murder, and therefore sin, which is the religious argument, is no more sinful from a scriptural point of view than all other sins we do not legislate against, such as greed, hate and fornication, the latter - fornication - being probably the single most likely cause of unwanted pregnancies in this country. At the end of the day, however, it is the nature of religion to fuss over appearances above the truth and the inner state of the person.

Mulherin puts abortion into the the category of sin - and based on that paragraph and her speech as a whole, it seems as though she understands "sin" as a purely personal matter, and not something that touches on the question of the human rights of others.  It's telling that she says,  it is the nature of religion to fuss over appearances above the truth and the inner state of the person - hardly the opinion of a mainstream Christian thinker, let alone the right-wing theocrat she is accused of being in various places on the internet. It's not my business to offer spiritual diagnoses over the internet, but it seems as though Deputy Mulherin has a curious understanding of sin and its relation to religion.  Sin seems to be something outlawed by a particular religion, very important to one's personal conscience, but not something at all to do with society in a broader sense or with issues of human rights.  She presents the general thrust of Ireland's social and moral changes in recent years in an unquestioningly positive manner, but above all, I think the weakness of her position - in as much as I understand it - is a total failure to consider the question of abortion as involving the rights of an unborn child.  


It's curious that Deputy Mulherin's use of the word "fornication" had the effect of triggering a tribalistic instinct. I've seen her praised by sincere Catholics (most of whom hadn't read her entire speech) for having the courage to call a spade a spade.  I'm not sure that many of them would have much time for the pro-choice argument Mulherin seems to be making.Similarly, speaking about fornication made her an ideal whipping-girl for many in the pro-choice world who could point to her as an example of pro-life Catholic ignorance from the backwoods of Mayo - an excuse to paint pro-lifers as being ignorant and insensitive zealots.  They totally pass over the fact that her speech seems to be that of someone who doesn't at all seem happy with the idea of legislative restrictions on abortion.     Anyway, I think the real thing to remember from all this is how poor the public discourse is in our country, especially where issues of religion are concerned and how unreliable a picture of things the media can paint.  Is there anyone out there in the mainstream media trying to give a true account of what Deputy Mulherin was arguing?

Draft of a Homily for Domenica in Albis

This Sunday is traditionally known as Domenica in Albis – the Sunday for the taking off of the white clothes.  In the Early Church, adults would have been welcomed into the Church at the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday night and would have worn their white baptismal robes to Church for the following eight days – the Octave of Easter - as a reminder to themselves and to others of the new life they had received in baptism.  However, this Sunday they would set their white robes and would be reminded that whilst their way of dress would no longer mark them out as new Christians, their way of life should continue to do so as they did their best to keep their baptismal promises and walk in the way Christ taught them.

Our First Reading gives us a picture of the Apostles and their followers living as a distinctive community whose teaching and way of life was different from the society around them.  If we look at the history books we see that their distinctive way of life led to both the admiration and the contempt of members of the broader society around them.  Because they recognised that Christ was the Lord and that there is only One God, they would not worship the Roman emperor as a god or take part in the pagan worship of the state.  The fact that Christians were equally accepting of slaves and the nobility as brothers and sisters in Christ led to them being mocked for their disregard of the social order.  Because of the Christian principles of respect for all life and the duty to care for the vulnerable, the first Christians would have nothing to do with the Roman custom of leaving sickly new-born babies to die on the rubbish heap – and indeed, often adopted such abandoned babies.  Those who would have no truck with the Christians dismissed this as weak-mindedness, but this Christian example of compassion gradually won many admirers.  Likewise, Christ’s teaching about marital fidelity was radically counter-cultural when men saw it as their right to cast off one wife and take up with another – but the Christian community stayed loyal to the teaching of Christ in recognising the importance and dignity of marriage as a path to holiness for husbands and wives alike.  In short, part and parcel of the Christian life is living a challenging sort of life, made possible by Christ’s gift of the Holy Spirit and the support of the Christian community.

The challenge to us today is to recognise that we too have received the same Holy Spirit – we have the same religious and spiritual DNA as the Christians of the Early Church, and whether we are a small minority or a majority of the population, the challenge to us is the same – to live lives in Communion with Christ and with one another and to bear witness to the Gospel values taught by Christ and passed on by the Church under the guidance and inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  If we have been baptised, we have been challenged to live a life of faith, basing what we say and do on the Gospel.  St John tells us, “this is what loving God is – keeping his commandants; and his commandments are not difficult because anyone who has been begotten by God has already overcome the world.”

Objectively speaking, God’s commandments are challenging, are difficult.  I don’t think we should understand St John to be telling us that the Christian life is a breeze.  Rather, He is reminding us that if we truly believe in the power of Him who has given us new life, we will have His help in living that Christian life.  And that Christian life, he reminds us, is something that is in opposition to the world.

There was an interesting survey published during the week – the point of it was to show up the differences between the thinking of Irish Catholics and the teaching of the Church.  I suspect the desired intention was to help make the case that the teachings of the Church don’t match up with what is happening in modern life or with the thoughts of Irish Catholics.  To be frank, I wasn’t at all very surprised at the results of the survey which showed Church teaching to be very much the minority opinion, especially where issues of sexual morality were at issue.  It’s not a surprise because our opinions are shaped by the society around us and the opinion makers – the newspaper editors, the advertisers, the writers of soap operas, TV celebrities and journalists and so on, they’re the ones who are talking to us and shaping our thoughts and influencing our opinions.  The question we must ask is whether they are doing so in order to help us follow Christ and live the kind of life He asks of us.  Is it progress if our beliefs and attitudes do not correspond to anything that previous generations of Christians would have recognised as Christianity?

The question we must ask of ourselves as Christians is whether we are making a genuine effort to understand the kind of life that Christ wants of us?  Or are we accepting the common assumptions of society without criticism.  If we are puzzled about something the Church teaches, or puzzled about something that the media tells that the Church teaches, do we make the effort to find out what the Church actually teaches and why?  Do we spend time with the scriptures and with the Catechism of the Catholic Church in order to discern the call of the Lord?  Do we ever balance the hours and hours of television, radio, newspapers and chat with time spent in prayer and the study of our faith?  Have we ever asked a priest we trust to explain something about Church teaching that puzzles us?  Do we believe enough in Christ and His victory over the world to believe that the way of life He calls us to might involve holding values that do not square with the common consensus of that same world?  Is it more important for us to accept the reasoning of the society around us, or to stay in communion with the followers of Jesus throughout the ages who were not afraid to choose a radical way of life above the values of their time?

When ‘doubting Thomas’ saw the Lord’s wounds and made His profession of faith, Jesus blessed all those who would accept the Apostles’ teaching and believe in Him:

You believe because you can see me.  Happy are those who have not seen, and yet believe.

That describes our situation – those of us who have not seen Christ in the flesh, but who know Him through the life of faith.  We know Him in prayer and in the sacraments, in the scriptures and in the life of the Church.  The prayers of this Mass ask that that knowledge and faith be kept alive and life-giving in our lives, in our minds, in our hearts.  We pray that we will have the courage to entrust ourselves to the Lord & the determination to seek His wisdom to sustain us in our Christian lives.

Addendum:  You need to read The Thirsty Gargoyle's take on the ACP survey.

A thought about the Association of Catholic Priests Survey...

There has been a fair amount of discussion today about the Association of Catholic Priests survey which shows the opinions of many Irish Catholics to be at odds the the doctrine of the Church. I suppose we're supposed to think that it's time for the "Institutional Church" to catch up with modern times and revise doctrine so as to fall in line with the opinions of "contemporary Catholics".  (Incidentally, the phrase "Institutional Church" makes me cringe - it almost always betrays a flawed ecclesiology.)
The thinking behind such a point of view is the idea that experience trumps Divine Revelation and a general lack of belief in revealed religion.  Only SOME of the challenges of the Gospel are viewed as politically correct nowadays, so it's acceptable to preach generosity to the less fortunate, but less so to affirm the value of chastity.  There seems to be a sense that Christ's message is take up your cross and follow me in a manner consistent with the values of your age.
I wish one or two other questions had been included in the survey - whether it's okay to work a few hours overtime for an under-the-counter cash wage or whether it's okay to tell a few white lies.  Would we be faced with the argument that the Church needs to change its teaching on honest in order to reflect the values of contemporary Catholics?

Rather than go through the whole survey, one question in particular caught my attention - the fact that only 5% of Catholics expressed the opinion that people who are divorced-and-in-a-second-relationship should not be allowed receive Holy Communion. Given that Christ Himself taught that divorcing and taking up with another partner was adultery and that it's clear from the scriptures that from the time of the Apostles grave sin excludes one from the Eucharist, we're being asked to swallow the proposition that the words of Christ and the teachings of the Apostles need to be reviewed based on the tolerance of the Irish people. [BTW, a study of Church discipline in the early centuries would be an eye-opening project for those people who imagine pre-Constantinian Christianity as some sort of let-it-all-hang-out hippy experiment.]
Any priest who has spent any time in parish ministry will know the pain caused by relationship breakdown and will want to be as sympathetic as possible to someone in such a situation.  However, parish life shows equally clearly that a culture which places little stock in the sacredness of marriage vows and the importance of marriage as the fundamental building block of the family is a society where children suffer from the fallout of this social change.  In modern Ireland the prophetic stance is to stand up for marriage.

The one thing that is clear from the survey is that those of us - clergy and lay - who have been charged with the task of teaching within the Church have done pretty poorly.  It shouldn't be a surprise to us that the cultural mores of those who produce our television programmes and write in our newspapers influence Irish Catholics more than the 10 minutes or so of preaching that church-goers hear every week.  There is very little sense in the Irish Church that one's faith is something that one should spend time in studying and that our religious convictions should lead us to have an understanding of life that is radically different from the culture around us.  Given that so far as social and moral issues were concerned, the values of society and the Church were in harmony until relatively recently, it's a new thing for Irish Catholicism to propose a vision that's at odds with the received morality.  Still, I think we priests should be courageous. Indeed, we must be courageous!  If our vocation means anything at all, it means being configured to Christ the Good Shepherd and there's a long tradition in the Patristic literature which pours contempt on the shepherd who remains silent.  As Pope St Gregory the Great put it:

When a pastor has been afraid to assert what is right, has he not turned his back and fled by remaining silent? Whereas if he intervenes on behalf of the flock, he sets up a wall against the enemy in front of the house of Israel. Therefore, the Lord again says to his unfaithful people: Your prophets saw false and foolish visions and did not point out your wickedness, that you might repent of your sins. The name of the prophet is sometimes given in the sacred writings to teachers who both declare the present to be fleeting and reveal what is to come. The word of God accuses them of seeing false visions because they are afraid to reproach men for their faults and thereby lull the evildoer with an empty promise of safety. Because they fear reproach, they keep silent and fail to point out the sinner’s wrongdoing.

That Patronage Report...

I was interested to read the report produced by the Forum on School Patronage. It's an engaging read and there's much of value in it.  I get the sense that most clergy are in favour of facilitating broader parent choice in terms of school patronage and ethos, in a way that respects the rights of local communities and of the Church.

However, in as much as it addressed the question of what denominational schools might look like I got the distinct sense that the report was written from a perspective that simply doesn't "get" the idea of religious faith.  Whilst our Catholic schools have a long tradition of educating and respecting the children of non-Catholic families, the suggestion that Catholic schools should display the emblems and symbols of other faiths alongside the crucifix or image of Our Lady crosses a line.  That's not the kind of concession that a religious person can in conscience make of someone of another faith.

Were I to receive hospital treatment in a Jewish hospital, I wouldn't be asking for crucifixes on the wall or a statue of the Madonna in the foyer. As long as I could pray my breviary and was treated with respect, I would be very grateful for the care received.

I was interested, therefore, to read today's article by Fr Eamonn Conway and Rik Van Nieuwenhove in the Examiner newspaper. As they succinctly put it, the report subscribes to a truncated understanding of what faith is.  By subscribing to a relativist rather than a pluralist view, the report essentially compromises the ability of any school - Catholic, Protestant, Jewish or Muslim - to maintain a religious ethos whilst admitting pupils of other faiths. 

The forum’s recommendation that the Catholic Church divest itself of some schools is welcome; this facilitates greater parental choice. What it recommends for schools that remain denominational, however, will effectively eradicate the rights of parents who want their children to have a faith-based education. 
The threat takes a number of forms. It calls for an end to rule 68 for national schools, which recognises religious instruction as a fundamental part of the school course and permits a religious spirit to "inform and vivify the whole work of the school". 
The forum is effectively requesting, even for faith-based schools, that no such spirit should characterise a denominational school. It specifically requests that religion be singled out to be taught as a discrete subject apart from the rest of the curriculum although all other subjects are to be taught in an integrated manner. 
Hymns and prayers are to be inclusive of the religious beliefs (and none) of all children. This recommendation would prohibit specific Christian prayer in a Christian school if there was even one atheist or, say, Muslim, enrolled. Similarly, the emblems of various religions are to be displayed and the feasts of different religions are to be celebrated without any allowance for a religious patron’s responsibility to uphold and foster its own specific ethos.

This question of Rule 68 is key.  The Catholic Bishops recognize that the rule could do with re-writing to take into account the existence of multidenominational  or non-religious schools and the like.  However, the deletion of rule 68 fails to recognise that for Catholics, our understanding of who Jesus Christ is lies at the heart of our educational efforts as we provide a rounded education to our co-religionists and to children of other faiths in our schools.  The ethos of our Catholic schools is established by law and reads as follows:

      A Roman Catholic School (which is established in connection with the Minister) aims at promoting the full and harmonious development of all aspects of the person of the pupil: intellectual, physical, cultural, moral and spiritual, including a living relationship with God and with other people. The school models and promotes a philosophy of life inspired by belief in God and in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Catholic school provides Religious education for the pupils in accordance with the doctrines, practices and tradition of the Roman Catholic Church and promotes the formation of the pupils in the Catholic Faith. 

With the removal of Rule 68, the education given is forcibly detached from this core vision and one has to ask in what sense a Catholic school can claim to be Catholic. The spirit or ethos of the school is truncated and the holistic vision of the human person and of education can no longer, of right, motivate the work of the school.  I have no doubt that other religious patronage bodies have similar concerns.

This seems to fly in the face of the principle of religious freedom and mistakes relativism for a healthy and genuine pluralism. Religious bodies can no longer direct their schools according to their own core beliefs.  This is not about the protection of or respect for minority faiths - rather, it's about putting forward the idea that it's no longer to actually believe or have real religious convictions.  It insults religious people and assumes that without the relativization of our own beliefs, we are unable to respect the beliefs of other believers.   

Do read all of the the article in the Examiner.  Beware also of the headlines surrounding this report - some of them give the misleading impression that the content of the report has met with an uncritical welcome from the Irish Bishops.  The Irish Independent makes clear that Fr Michael Drumm of the Catholic Schools Partnership has his reservations about the deletion of Rule 68 and the Iona Institute also make some valuable points.

On the Fr Flannery Case...

There has been a lot of fuss online and in the media about the Fr Flannery case. Fr Tony Flannery is a well-known Redemptorist preacher and writer who is said to have been under investigation by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for the past couple of months.  (Curiously the story only broke during Holy Week, allowing all kinds of comparisons to be drawn between Fr Flannery and Christ... Whoever brought this to the attention of the Irish Catholic knew what they were doing...) As Michael Kelly reports:

Fr Flannery, who is a well-known author and retreat-giver, has ceased writing his regularly monthly column in the Redemptorist Reality magazine. The Irish Catholic understands that this is as a direct consequence of the Vatican’s intervention. It is the first time in 14 years that Fr Flannery’s regular column has not appeared.

To be quite honest, whilst I was aware of Fr Flannery as a "liberal priest" (I'm not a huge fan of that particular euphemism), I don't think I've ever paid enough attention to anything he's written to say definitively whether this CDF investigation is warranted or not.  However, I do have the sneaking suspicion that it probably is and I'm glad that someone finally seems to be exercising reasonable oversight into what we as priests teach from our literal and metaphorical pulpits.
Needless to say, this investigation into Fr Flannery has occasioned some outrage - his superior in Limerick made some extraordinary comments about the Church engaging in FBI tactics.  (Apparently reading what's publicly published and listening to what's preached in church is an 'FBI tactic'.)
The ever-dependable Patsy McGarry in the Irish Times presents a wonderfully unbalanced piece which consists of quotes lifted from an article in Doctrine and Life and the Association of Catholic Priests' website.  Why go to the bother of tracking down someone who might have a different perspective to offer when you can put together a quick article by copying and pasting from the ACP's blog and comment box.
I'll be keeping Fr Flannery in my prayers.  To his credit, I know that he has in his kindness been of great help to a number of people of my acquaintance.  However, if he has been misleading people by his teaching, then it is to his benefit and the benefit of the Church that the situation be rectified.

As a counterpoint to the guff you'll find in so many other places, it's worth reading the actual text of what Pope Benedict said to the priests of Rome in his Chrism Mass last Thursday.  He poses the genuine question as to what Christ meant by telling us that we are "consecrated in the truth".

Two things, above all, are asked of us: there is a need for an interior bond, a configuration to Christ, and at the same time there has to be a transcending of ourselves, a renunciation of what is simply our own, of the much-vaunted self-fulfilment. We need, I need, not to claim my life as my own, but to place it at the disposal of another – of Christ.

Clerical discipline and that sense of self-renunciation is something that sits uneasily with an age that is precisely about self-fulfilment, about the assertion of my rights and my opinions.  It's easy for clergy to forget that whatever authority or regard we might have amongst the faithful, it only makes sense in as much as we are faithful to the Church, conformed to Christ and willing to set aside our own egotism.
When I was studying Canon Law in seminary, our professor used to tell us that whilst the promises or vows of celibacy or chastity that priests and religious make are counter-cultural and a personal challenge, it is in fact the obedience we promise to our bishops, our religious superiors and to the Church that is the most radical gift-of-self.  I think this is a point that is lost on the mainstream media (until cases like Fr Flannery's surface), but one that I never fail to make when discussing priesthood with seminarians.

Finally, on a semi-related note, so much of what the Church has being going through of late reminds me of Cardinal Newman's Biglietto Speech.  I get the sense that even within the Church the idea of religion as opinion has a greater hold on us than our belief in Divine Revelation.

That Apostolic Visitation

I've been kept busy with parish work for the past few days, so I've not had the time to write down my thoughts on the findings of the Apostolic Visitation to Ireland.  In the main, I agree with Fr John Hogan's take on the report, and in particular his suggestion that it be read carefully. I'm sure that some friends of my own are disappointed that the report didn't suggest such drastic actions as widespread sackings in the theology faculties and the closure of Maynooth. Plenty of other commentators are bemoaning the fact that the report didn't suggest the introduction of married clergy.  Of course, many of these latter commentators aren't too keen on the Catholic Church teaching actual Catholic Doctrine, so it's not likely that they'd be happy in any case. It should also be noted that this visitation was not primarily about Child Protection or an analysis of Child Protection failures - it was intended on giving a general picture of the Irish Church so that it might be effective in its mission.

If the Church in Ireland actually takes the recommendations of the report seriously, there is more than enough there for us to get working on for the renewal of our Church.

Lazarus and Dives

We had the parable of Lazarus & Dives for the Gospel at Mass today.  Quite apart from the very pertinent Lenten reminder of our responsibility for those in need, the end of the parable made me think a little about the nature of revelation:

'The rich man replied, "Father, I beg you then to send Lazarus to my father's house, since I have five brothers, to give them warning so that they do not come to this place of torment too". "They have Moses and the prophets," said Abraham "let them listen to them.". "Ah no, father Abraham," said the rich man "but if someone comes to them from the dead, they will repent." Then Abraham said to him, "If they will not listen either to Moses or to the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone should rise from the dead".'

At a recent confirmation dinner, a group of us clergy were discussing various discredited or dubious visionaries and the way so many people (even priests & bishops) who should know better are taken in by them. It's natural to look for extraordinary signs to confirm or strengthen our faith, and indeed, the Church has a long enough list of authentic visionaries and mystics that we can't just assume that these phenomena are always fraudulent or inauthentic. However, I think the parable of Lazarus and Dives serves to warn us that God's Revelation is essentially public.
Abraham insists on the sufficiency of the Law and Prophets - the scriptures known and revered by the Chosen People teach God's commandments with sufficient clarity to let Dives's brothers know their obligations. If their hearts are hardened against God's Word, then even the wonder of a risen Lazarus won't change things.
Implicit in that, is, I think, the idea that God had made known all that was necessary in a very public way and there would be something deficient about a faith based on the terrifying wonder of the ghostly warning of one who was dead.
One of the earliest challenges faced by the Church was the rise of Gnosticism - a mystical sort of teaching which claimed that there was a deeper and higher knowledge beyond the Gospels that could only be understood as one progressed spiritually.  In facing down this teaching, the 2nd century bishop, St Irenaeus of Lyons insisted on the public nature of revelation - Christ taught openly, the Apostles taught openly and the truth of the Church's proclamation is seen in the way in which the different Apostolic Churches openly proclaim the one and the same Gospel in harmony with each other, whereas the furtive and elaborate teachings of the differing gnostic sects are in contradiction with each other and in contrast to the manner in which Christ and His Apostles taught.
Bringing things up to the present day, with the different schisms and disagreements in Christianity, the whole idea of the harmonious and public proclamation of the Gospel might not be as convincing an argument as to the truth or credibility of the faith.  One has to do a bit of spadework to see how the Catholic Church preserves the Apostolic Faith in a way that the Orthodox Churches and protestant denominations don't.  However, the principle of the essential nature of Revelation being Public casts an interesting light on a number of areas of Church life.
As a Church, we should be very clear that we have no hidden agenda or secret motive in what we do. All our aims and intentions are to be found in what we teach. Our only task is to live according to the Gospel we have received and to bring others to that same saving knowledge and lifestyle. What is more, NOTHING about that knowledge or lifestyle is secret.  There's no secret technique for nirvana, there's no hidden knowledge about Christ or the Church that is only revealed to an inner elite.  All that we believe is public knowledge, and any claim by anyone within the Church to have secret knowledge is a denial of the public teaching of Christ, the Apostles and their successors.
Certainly, one doesn't deny that as one grows in the knowledge of the faith, one receives new insights.  Likewise, a life of prayer brings a deepening knowledge and intimacy with God. However, none of this, strictly speaking, is truly a secret knowledge in the sense of being an understanding or teaching that is different from that publicly professed by the Church.
I think that also puts a certain duty and responsibility on Christian teachers, lay and ordained.  We need to be upfront about what the Church teaches and diligent in passing on a full and thorough understanding of the faith. Certainly we need to have 'pastoral instincts' in our manner of teaching - but when these 'pastoral instincts' lead us to obfuscate or obscure the teaching of the Church, then we're failing in that duty to pass on what we have received and we're being fundamentally untrue to that same Gospel.
We need also to be aware that we should be seen to be people of integrity. If we fudge things or act evasively, then we're not being faithful to the One who is Truth Himself. Our behaviour needs to reflect His charity and His integrity.
When I meet the parents of children who are being prepared for the sacraments, I like to make a point of explaining that their children come into contact with so many different competing world views - what they see on TV, what's pushed at them by advertisers, what they pick up from other youngsters and the adults they come into contact with them. The Church has an agenda for their children as well, but almost uniquely, we're totally upfront about what it is.  We want to help children and parents alike to come to know Jesus Christ and His Gospel and to live their lives in following Him as best they can. And there's nothing hidden or concealed about that agenda.  It's perfectly public, there's no ulterior motive and we're totally transparent about our intentions.
Finally, it's important to remember this public nature of Revelation when dealing with the plethora of visionaries, messages and private revelations that are out there. I won't deny that some of them have been found to be genuine and that God's grace can and does work through them for many people. However, no matter how personally helpful or authentic they may be, they are essentially secondary when compared to the public proclamation of Christ's Gospel by the Church. Christ wants to speak to all nations through His Church, and we should be especially sceptical about any small group or clique that claims to have an 'ínside track' in terms of our salvation. Putting too much interest on a particular devotion as being the way to be saved or constantly chasing after signs, wonders and special messages run the distinct danger of distracting us from the utterly sufficient and complete Revelation given to the world by Christ through His Church.