On Deacons, Female Deacons and Deaconesses...

This statement by Fr Lombardi is what is known as 'pouring cold water' on a story.

In fairness to the Pope, he was asked the question & he _didn't_ really seem enthusiastic about it. He said that he'd have to check whether there were studies done about it. (He obviously didn't recall the 2002 report of the International Theological Commission which stated quite clearly that the deaconesses of the early Church were not simply female versions of the ordained deacons.) He pointed out that in so far as he knew, the historical and theological evidence was that deaconesses were not simply 'female deacons', by reference to what he had been told by an expert in the field. And then, proceeding from that point of uncertainty he said that a commission on the matter "seems useful to me." To my mind, a fair reading of his words suggests that the establishment of a commission is something that he _might_ do, having looked into the matter further.

However, various media outlets ran with the story suggesting that the pope was _definitely_ going to establish a commission. Various Catholic commentators went into _overload_ throwing out scenarios about all the work that 'female deacons' would do in terms of preaching, baptising, etc, etc... and basically gave the impression that this was around the corner.

Now, speaking as someone who doesn't claim to be an expert, but who has studied the history of theology, it seems to me that the 'deaconesses' in Church history didn't have the same duties as the ordained deacons, and that their appointment/installation as deaconesses wasn't usually seen as being sacramental ordination. I cannot see _any_ plausible path whereby the present historical evidence can justify any other convincing conclusion.

The question of whether some kind of non-sacramental position within the Church carrying the title of deaconess might be useful in this day and age is another question, and is possibly more debatable. Given Pope Francis's consistent line about not clericalising the laity, I don't see that happening.

But whatever your understanding of the historical and theological position, I think there's a lesson here in the way that the media and certain Catholic commentators aren't content to give a balanced account of what the Pope _actually_ says, but decide to run with their own agenda. That's what leads to Fr Lombardi having to clarify these remarks. It's not the Pope being hopelessly obscure. It's people choosing not to listen to him honestly.

On why the Vatican's hands are tied regarding Fr Tony Flannery

The Case of Fr Flannery

There has been a lot of media attention in Ireland & worldwide about the Redemptorist priest Fr Tony Flannery. He wrote a prominent op-ed for today's Irish Times entitled Vatican's demand for silence is too high a price in the same edition as this news report from Patsy McGarry (Priests support Flannery over challenging views). As both articles explain, Fr Flannery was removed from ministry due to opinions expressed by him in Reality magazine a couple of years ago. Fr Flannery himself - despite writing at length about contraception and Humanae Vitae - doesn't explain precisely what opinions landed him in hot water with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Patsy McGarry points to Fr Flannery's writings on women's ordination, contraception and homosexuality.

Where the real problem is
However, this is to overlook a huge point. If we look at the New York Times account of the situation (Priest is Planning to Defy the Vatican's Orders to Stay Quiet) we see that neither Fr Flannery nor Patsy McGarry is telling the full story. It states:

The Vatican’s doctrinal office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote to Father Flannery’s religious superior, the Rev. Michael Brehl, last year instructing him to remove Father Flannery from his ministry in County Galway, to ensure he did not publish any more articles in religious or other publications, and to tell him not to give interviews to the news media. In the letter, the Vatican objected in particular to an article published in 2010 in Reality, an Irish religious magazine. 

In the article, Father Flannery, a Redemptorist priest, wrote that he no longer believed that “the priesthood as we currently have it in the church originated with Jesus” or that he designated “a special group of his followers as priests.” Instead, he wrote, “It is more likely that some time after Jesus, a select and privileged group within the community who had abrogated power and authority to themselves, interpreted the occasion of the Last Supper in a manner that suited their own agenda.” 

Father Flannery said the Vatican wanted him specifically to recant the statement, and affirm that Christ instituted the church with a permanent hierarchical structure and that bishops are divinely established successors to the apostles.

(emphasis mine)

It's curious that the Irish Times and most of Fr Flannery's supporters don't bother to mention that he denies a basic truth of the faith that we learn as children (that Christ instituted the sacraments, including Holy Orders) and that he considers the priesthood itself to be some kind of illegitimate takeover of the Church dating back almost 2,000 years. Whatever their respect for Fr Flannery's pastoral gifts, his kindness to people or even their agreement with him on other points, I can't understand how any group of Catholic priests can seriously argue that it's okay to deny the very nature of priesthood itself and still present oneself as a loyal and dutiful member of the Church.

Whither Fr Flannery's conscience?
Additionally, I can't understand how Fr Flannery can square it with his own conscience that he's willing to fight for his ministry as a priest whilst painting the priesthood itself as a conspiratorial and oppressive perversion of the Gospel. That's trying to have your cake and eat it. I'm not familiar with the CDF's disciplinary procedures - I do know that in the case of members of religious orders like the Redemptorists that they prefer to use the 'line management' within the religious order rather than dealing directly with the priest involved. I don't have a huge issue with people discussing the procedures involves and whether they are the best way to handle a case such as Fr Flannery. However, I do not see how someone can still try to claim the right to exercise the ministry of priest while dissenting so radically from the teachings of the Church (as affirmed at Vatican II in Lumen Gentium & elsewhere.). If Fr Flannery is going to claim a 'pulpit' as a minister of the Church, hasn't the Church the right to insist that he teach in unity with the Church. If Fr Flannery chooses to do otherwise, then he's the one placing himself on the outside.
 
Final Note
It's interesting to note that at lunchtime yesterday the Irish Times website carried a report which quoted Fr Flannery's more outlandish statements about the priesthood. However, later in the day, the article had been redacted to exclude those controversial opinions in favour of more 'popular' forms of dissent.

In other news, Nuncio is a Catholic

Or, when is news not news? I note with bemusement this article from the Irish Independent that tells us There will never be any women priests, insists Papal Nuncio. If you take the bother to read the story, you'll see that the actual news part of the article doesn't appear until the 9th paragraph of the story when we learn that the Archbishop Charles Brown (Papal Nuncio to Ireland) was in Killarney for celebrations commemorating Msgr Hugh O'Flaherty's 'escape line' in war-time Rome. So much for the WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN and WHY being given to us promptly. We're eventually given a short quote about the nuncio's assessment of the Church in Ireland, but that just squeaks in at the very end. We're never even given a hint that the nuncio might have said anything about Msgr O'Flaherty. And we're never told why and in what context the nuncio made his statement about women priests. Was it a question fired to him by a journalist? Was it in the context of a speech or homily? Did the nuncio raise the question or did someone else. Now, the article as it stands is certainly factual - I have no doubt but that the nuncio's words are being recorded correctly. But is it news? It's not news in the sense that any half-informed reader will already know that the Pope's man in Ireland is almost certain to follow the orthodox line on things. If the nuncio were to say other than he did, THAT would be news. Now, I would imagine that most readers who have an interest in the Church in Ireland would actually rather learn what assessment the nuncio has of his 9 months in the country. They might or might not agree with it, but it'd certainly be more worthy of the word 'news' than the non-news the Indo prefers to serve up. Personally, I'd also like to know what Archbishop Brown had to say to the people at the celebrations about Msgr O'Flaherty and his wartime exploits. Both O'Flaherty and the nuncio both worked in the same Vatican department. Perhaps that'd be an interesting angle to interview the nuncio about.

I suppose the question I would have is what purpose the article has. I really don't think it's supposed to inform us. Consciously or unconsciously, the editorial team at the Independent seem more interested in reinforcing the picture of a hierarchy who have little to say about a limited range of issues rather than giving a full and accurate picture of what's going on and what church leaders actually say. Is it that the journalistic and editorial staff lack the knowledge to report on the real news here, or is it that they just don't want to?

I came across this lovely story today - an account of the Pope visiting some senior citizens at a home for the elderly in Rome. He speaks to those present as 'an elderly man visiting his peers' and gives a beautiful reflection on old age. If you were to only read the Irish secular press, you'd get the idea that pretty much all the Pope does is talk about 'sex', and when he does, it's usually to 'condemn' something. I'm sure that if this story IS picked up by the secular press, it'll probably be spun as the Pope 'slamming euthanasia'. I guess the 'love one another' angle doesn't sell papers.

It's important that we be aware how our news is filtered for us by media organizations and how one of the great benefits of the internet is the opportunity it gives us to circumvent the concious or unconscious ideological filters of the mainstream media. We need to question why particular stories are presented for our attention and why others are not. And we need to realise that in Ireland the vast majority of practising Catholics rely on the mainstream media to let them know what's happening in the church beyond the bounds of their own parish.

A final comment - I feel obliged in justice to the reporter whose byline appears in the Independent to point out that I've noticed her report reasonably well on religious and regional news before. One can never be sure whether a news article reflects the work of the journalist or the editorial staff.

The Princess & the Cardinal...

A few days ago, Seraphic mentioned that it was the Dianaversary - the anniversary of the late Princess Diana of Wales. The public response to her death was enormous and is popularly perceived as somehow changing the relationship between the British Monarchy and the people.  The popular narrative is that the official behaviour of the traditionalist Royals was deemed inadequate by the general public.  The press judged that the populace's grief at the loss of the 'People's Princess' was more authentic than that of the Royal family and put pressure on them to leave Scotland and come to Buckingham Palace where floral tributes were stacked high outside the railings.  Headlines such as Where is our Queen? Where is her flag? and Show us you care challenged the traditional protocol and in response, Queen Elizabeth gave orders for the Union Flag to be flown at half-mast on the day of the funeral - a break from the traditional protocol, but (more importantly) touted by press and politicians as a sign of some sort of seismic shift in relations between the Monarchy and People in Britain. It was taken to represent the public will overcoming the traditions of the Royal family and forcing the Monarchy to engage in a new way with its subjects.

Not being British, I'm not sure I can comment intelligently on the extent to which that narrative is true -  it certainly suited the newspapers to congratulate themselves as the influential and powerful mouthpieces of the British people capable of bending the will of the Queen herself and I suspect that the self-consciously modernising 'New Labour' government of Tony Blair found it a useful story as well. Regardless of whether it effected change within the Monarchy or not, that's the accepted story out there and I suspect that newspaper editors everywhere are looking to repeat the job again - to seize on something that strikes a chord with the public and seem to play an influential role bringing about change and progress.

I'm inclined to think that today's Leading Article in London's Independent newspaper is an attempt to stir up some of same emotions that swirled about at the time of Princess Diana's death.  The occasion is the death of the Archbishop Emeritus of Milan, Carlo Cardinal Martini SJ, and in particular the international attention given to his last interview (text here in Italian) where (a month before his death) he argued that the is Church behind the times and urged a re-thinking of some areas of Church life. Non-Italian speakers will find this automated translation a help in understanding what the Cardinal said.  The juicier parts of the interview have been widely reported and put out there as a challenge to Pope Benedict.  Shorn of their context, they seem to have become a rallying cry for people who had probably never heard of Cardinal Martini until last week.

The article in the Independent begins with a challenge, trying to set up its Diana-moment:

If Pope Benedict does attend the funeral in Milan of Cardinal Martini, whose body, robed and mitred, crosier at his side, was laid out for the veneration of the faithful at the weekend, it will surely be with mixed feelings. The danger of not attending the last obsequies of such a high-ranking prince of the Church is that it might appear cowardly, tantamount to a public admission that a rift had grown up between them.          

 A nice opening, but one totally detached from reality. The protocol - no matter how well-regarded or important a Cardinal might be - is that the Pope sends a delegate to funerals on his behalf.  In this case, Cardinal Comastri will attend on the Pope's behalf and read a message at the funeral. Cardinal Marini's successor, Cardinal Scola will celebrate the funeral Mass. The Independent would like to have us think that this might appear cowardly and a public admission of a rift between Pope and Cardinal - but that's only the case if you know nothing about the protocol surrounding these funerals and the absurdity of the idea that the Pope's attendance was ever a possibility.
If you look at this list of the Cardinals who have died during Pope Benedict's papacy, you'll see that between 5 and 10 Cardinals die each year. Some were close collaborators of the Pope in the Roman Curia. Others headed important dioceses throughout the world. Some were retired scholars or churchmen who were honoured by the Holy Father for their life's work. Some were men whose thought was close to that of Pope Benedict, others might called part of the 'loyal opposition' or have theological opinions which differ from the Popes.  All were - for one reason or another - significant in the life of the Church.  To the best of my knowledge, the Pope didn't attend the funerals of any of them - not even the funerals of those who worked in the Vatican and had their funeral Mass in St. Peter's with the exception of doing some of the prayers for Cardinals whose funerals were celebrated in St Peter's Basilica. The Pope was represented at all of them and he mourned their passing, but he doesn't celebrate their funeral Masses and doesn't attend them in person. I suspect that one of the reasons why he doesn't attend these funerals is precisely so as to avoid the kind of insinuation made by the Independent article - if one Cardinal is honoured by the Pope's presence at his funeral, then the Cardinal who does not have the Pope attend is immediately presumed to have been snubbed and dishonoured by the Pope. As it is not practical or possible for the Pope to honour all Cardinals with his personal presence at their funeral, then the protocol must be that he honours them all equally by sending a representative and by offering Mass himself each November for the Cardinals who died during the year.
There is also a practical point to consider - a Papal trip to Milan for Cardinal Martini's funeral would, in effect, be a pastoral visit of the Pope to that North Italian city with all the attendant diplomatic and security hullabaloo. Is it really to be expected that the necessary preparations could be accomplished in a couple of days? Or that it would even be appropriate for the Pope to take away from the funeral liturgy by the fuss which would inevitably accompany his own presence?
No, this whole false question of whether the Pope would attend Martini's funeral in Milan is either the ill-informed pondering of someone who knows next-to-nothing of Church affairs or a speculation dishonestly raised by someone who knew it was not a possibility, but wanted to fling some mud in Pope Benedict's direction with the expectation that it would stick.

The rest of the article is the usual boiler-plate criticism of the Church.

The rest of the Catholic hierarchy is afraid of its authoritarian leader, and seems unwilling even to question, let alone oppose, his hard-line views on contraception, homosexual relationships, the remarriage of divorced people in church, the admission of women to the priesthood, the abolition of clerical celibacy and a lot of other issues.

It's very easy to fulminate about Pope Benedict the 'hard-liner' and 'authoritarian leader' if you approach these issues with the presumption that the tradition of the Church has nothing to add to the discussion. It's easy to paint Pope Benedict as the big bad wolf if you set aside his evident humility and the fact that as a theologian and a Cardinal, he did indeed scrupulously and seriously question the Church's position on many of those issues. The trouble with Benedict from the Independent's point of view is that when Ratzinger/Benedict raises these questions and seriously discusses them, he doesn't come up with the answers the Independent was looking for. For example, just last June at the 'World Meeting of Families' in Milan, as part of a Q&A session, the Pope dealt with the question of Divorced and Re-married couples. Interestingly, both Cardinal Martini and Pope Benedict see engagement with and support of families in just that situation as being a key pastoral priority for the Church. In his final Cardinal Martini asked:

 The question of whether the divorced can take Communion should be reversed. How can the Church get to help with the power of the sacraments to those who have complex family situations?

 Speaking in Milan, Pope Benedict XVI dealt with precisely this problem and said:

 As regards these people - as you have said - the Church loves them, but it is important they should see and feel this love. I see here a great task for a parish, a Catholic community, to do whatever is possible to help them to feel loved and accepted, to feel that they are not “excluded” even though they cannot receive absolution or the Eucharist; they should see that, in this state too, they are fully a part of the Church.

Certainly Pope Benedict and Cardinal Martini were not in full agreement on this matter.  However, responsible journalism would do more to make clear that Pope Benedict is exercised by the same concerns for people's situations and their relationship with the Church that troubled Cardinal Martini. It is not fair to imply he is blind to these problems and that he hasn't encouraged Catholic thinkers and pastors to do their best to bring the love of Christ and His Church in seeking to respond to these pastoral situations.
I think too that the media has a responsibility to the memory of Cardinal Martini as well. Even though I profoundly disagree with some of the things said by the Cardinal and frankly believe some of them to be irresponsible and in error, it would be fairer to him and to those who hold him in high regard to report what he said fully and in context, rather than mining his interviews for stones to throw at the Pope.  At times I believe the Cardinal spoke out of line and spoke in error. I fear that in some ways he misled a great many people.  At other times, however, he raised genuine and serious questions to assist the Church in responding to the challenges of the world in a manner faithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Accurate and nuanced reporting would enable us better to sift the wheat from the chaff in Martini's contribution to the debate. (Blog post corrected to take account of more accurate information received about Cardinals' funerals in St Peter's.)

Extraordinary Hyperbole...

The media furore around the CDF keeping an eye on the writings of some Irish priests is continuing with the news that Fr Brian D'Arcy's articles are now being reviewed before they are published. Fr D'Arcy is "saddened and disappointed" at this. Now, it's not a nice thing when a priest's writings have to be reviewed like this - in an ideal world, such a step would be unnecessary.  However, the priest's voice is not his own and the pulpit that is given to us by the Church is not ours by right, but is given to us that we might teach according to the mind of Christ and the Church.

Two points are especially worth making - Fr D'Arcy's newspaper articles have been cleared before publishing since last March.  If you have a look at the archive of his writings over at the Sunday World website you'll see that he's critical of the Irish hierarchy and the Vatican, and writes supportively about the results of the recent Association of Catholic Priests survey. From the looks of things, a "party line" isn't being heavily imposed on him and I would guess that as long as he's not actually contradicting church doctrine in an especially ham-fisted manner, he's pretty much allowed to write what he likes. I don't think he's being dealt with especially harshly here.

Secondly, the reported comments of Fr Peter McVerry caused me much amusement. Fr McVerry is, in many ways, a fine priest and has probably done more good for homeless youngsters in Dublin than anyone else.  I readily and freely admit that in many ways I am unfit to polish his shoes.  However, having heard him speak on a number of occasions, I know that he seems to have a pretty ropey grasp of theology and Church history.  Anyway, Fr McVerry says of priests that “They are terrified that if they speak publicly they will get their heads chopped off.”

Get their heads chopped off? I know he's just using a turn of phrase, but there's no need for that degree of hyperbole.  I know our new nuncio used to work with the CDF, but I very much doubt that he'll be organising dawn raids on the homes of Ireland's favourite priests in order to have them transported to the Vatican for summary execution. 

As I say, if Fr D'Arcy's freedom of expression is anything to go by, we're certainly no-where near the level of super-villain oppression suggested by the CDF's critics.

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.

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.

A post to prove that I'm still alive...

Taps microphone
Is thing thing still on?

Apologies to the couple of people who still follow me.  I've not been very diligent about keeping it up to date.  A mixture of genuine busy-ness and a wretched dose of sloth has kept me away from my blog.  Anyway, I wanted to add a few links to my blogroll and draw my readers' attention to a few articles.

The Irish Blogosphere
Since my last post, I've added links to a couple of Catholic blogs which concern themselves with Irish issues.  First of all, the Lux Occulta blog has a mainly historical focus, with a wealth of articles and pamphlets painting a picture of the Irish Church in the first half of the 20th Century.  Need one say that this picture doesn't always square with the dominant narrative?
Even though he's based in England, The Thirsty Gargoyle seems to be the go-to blog for commentary on the media's treatment of Irish Church matters. When he takes Patsy McGarry to task like this, he does the Church and the truth a great service.  I wish that the Bishops' Conference were more pro-active in doing likewise.  There seems to be this assumption that it's unpastoral or counter-productive to challenge the mainstream media in this way or that because of the genuine failings of the Church that we must therefore sit in silence.  However, renewal and justice can only be served by truth, and a failure to challenge untruths does no service to the faithful.  When I read The Thirsty Gargoyle's blog-posts about the Irish Church, I usually wish that I had the time (and intellect) to write them first.

Further Afield
Amy Welborn is one of Catholic America's best known bloggers.  In her latest book, Wish You Were Here she writes about her experience of losing her husband (the late Michael Dubriel) and her path through grief as she takes her family on a trip to Sicily a few months after his death.  It's a very honest and faith-filled account of grief and healing, and is permeated with a sense of the sacramentality of this world for the believer - grace and healing by God's power gradually make themselves known to her, often through the most mundane and everyday of things.  This book is well worth a read and Amy's latest blog Booked is worth following.

To my mind, John Allen is one of the best religion reporters out there.  I'm not a fan of his newspaper, the National Catholic Reporter, but his work is rightly noted for its fairness and insight.  One of the reasons I like his work is the way in which he's able to school other journalists (and indeed many Catholics) with articles such as Three things about the church to give up for Lent.

Prison Chaplaincy...

I'm not a fan of the Association of Catholic Priests, but I find this statement on their website very interesting.
It concerns a prison chaplain and a convicted rapist who is suspected of being responsible for the deaths of a number of young women. On his release from prison a number of months ago, the ex-prisoner was followed by a posse of journalists and camera men. I remember being disgusted by the voyeuristic tone of the coverage at the time. Anyway, the ACP statement is as follows:

The Association of Catholic Priests wishes to affirm its full support for the priestly work of Fr. Ciarán Enright, Chaplain Arbour Hill Prison, in the wake of the unjustified criticisms made against him in the Sunday World, 5th June. During the lengthy imprisonment of Larry Murphy in Arbour Hill, Fr. Ciarán ministered to him in a caring and compassionate manner. It is part of the Church’s role to break down the social barriers which society tries to erect, just as Jesus did. No-one, no matter what crimes they have committed, is excluded from the Church’s caring ministry or from the love of God.
The reprehensible manner in which Larry Murphy was released from Arbour Hill prison at the end of his sentence has already been severely criticised in the most recent Prison Chaplains’ Annual Report. The media coverage fuelled fear and anxiety amongst the general public, could only have added to the distress of his victim and indeed could have put his own life in danger. The only voice of protest came from Fr. Ciarán. Being faithful to the Gospel requires the Church to affirm the dignity of every human being, and to insist that this dignity be respected. This does not always sit easily with the attitudes of many in society.
The media witch hunt which, in the pursuit of profit, demonises some high profile offenders whose crimes are rightly abhorrent to the vast majority of society, only increases the risk of re-offending and consequently makes society less safe.
As prison chaplain, Fr. Ciarán has devoted many years to ministering to those whom society would prefer to shun. As Catholic priests, we stand firmly with him, and we are encouraged by his faithful witness to the values of the Gospel.

Amen to that! I've always had a huge regard for prison chaplains and the fact that Fr Enright's ministry is provoking howls of outrage from the gutter-press should be a reminder to us how the Gospel of reconciliation and the doctrine of the dignity of the human person is subversive of worldly values. The pastoral support and concern of the Church is not something which should or can be earned, but is something that is offered to all. Often those most in need of that support and concern are those who are 'least deserving' in the eyes of the world.

Readers might be interested in reading the text of the Sunday World article which prompted the above statement:

THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE
Priest pal of rapist Murphy in bizarre rant in support of sicko
THE priest who is predator Larry Murphy's best pal has claimed that the sick sex beast is the victim of a "shameful witch hunt".
Father Ciaran Enright says the rapist and attempted killer's life is in danger.
And in a stunning outburst he claims Murphy should have been given special treatment when he was released from prison last year.
The Sunday World has learned that the priest - Murphy's only friend in the world - is furious over the way that his sick sidekick Murphy is being pursued by the Press and blames the Irish Prison Service for "appalling and irresponsible" treatment of him.
The head chaplain at Dublin's Arbour Hill prison, where Murphy served a 10-year sentence for a vile rape and attempted murder, is in regular contact with the suspected serial killer and greeted him at Dublin Airport when he returned to the country 11 days ago.
Garda sources say that the holy man has been totally taken in by Murphy and believes that he is a reformed character.
Impulsive
However, senior gardai say that Murphy is an "impulsive psychopath" and could strike again at any time. He is now living in a safe house in rural Ireland and will not leave the country until at least the end of next week.
Fr Enright, in his position as head chaplain, said: "The hysteria that was generated by media coverage heightened the danger to his life and fuelled fear and anxiety among the general public.
"While current legislation may not have allowed for any curtailment of this appalling media coverage, senior management had not only the power, but also the responsibility, to be cognisant of such intense media intrusion when putting a discharge plan in place for a person who had spent over 10 years in the custodial care of the State.
"The failure to do so represents a clear failure of responsibility and duty of care that played into the hands of the media."
The devil's advocate went on to say that making Murphy walk out the front gates of Arbour Hill when he was released caused the pervert "unnecessary distress" and created a "witch hunt" that was "shameful and dangerous".
The 46-year-old psycho refused all offers of counselling and rehabilitation treatment during his decade behind bars.
Despite Murphy giving two fingers to the authorities, Fr Enright has stood up for him, saying the lack of special treatment "endangered his life and caused untold distress for many people".
"No amount of political spin or selective recalling of facts can justify this," Fr Enright said.
The priest has also accused the prison service of leaking "inaccurate and false" information about Murphy that Enright believes was "destructive, disturbing and unacceptable".
The Sunday World can exclusively reveal the background of Larry Murphy's controversial return to Ireland.
The 'Beast of Baltinglass' was enjoying a drink in an open-air bar in a square of Las Ramblas in Barcelona on Thursday, May 19, when his passport fell out of his back pocket. Contrary to reports, there was no prostitute involved in stealing it.
He only realised it was missing when he went back to his hostel and the following day he went to the Irish Consulate in the city and informed them of what happened and asked about how to get a replacement.

The Sunday World ignores previous press reports that show Fr Enright encouraging Larry Murphy to engage with the probation services after leaving prison. I'm glad that Fr Enright was at the airport to meet this man and I agree 100% with his criticisms of the media pursuit of Murphy following his release from prison. If you read what Fr Enright actually said, it's far from being the 'bizarre rant' implied by the journalist.

Now, if Larry Murphy is guilty of further crimes, then of course he should be prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned. However, failing that, I suspect that some sectors of the Irish media would be reasonably satisfied by his suicide. If, God forbid, that should come to pass, those journalists would have blood on their hands.

An interesting article...

Andrew O'Connell of the Irish Catholic is definitely worth reading on the latest child protection controversy in Ireland. His article puts together a very clear picture of the situation.

Media reports gave the impression that the Church had willingly placed legal obstacles in the way of the Board's review of current safeguarding practices in dioceses and religious congregations. The impression was also given that the Church was withholding information and starving the Board of funding to conduct training in best practice. Legal obstruction, financial strangulation and continuing hypocrisy; the hallmarks of an un-reformable institution, according to one journalist.
However, that is a gross misrepresentation. How that impression was created was due to three factors; the presentation of events in the Board's own report, the willingness of the media to provide the worst possible interpretation and the failure of the Church to provide a rapid response to a meltdown situation.

Why is it that Andrew seems to be able to explain what's going more clearly and more effectively than the hierarchy's own media office?

Dorothy Cummings McLean on Spirit Radio this Friday

Be sure and listen to Spirit Radio this Friday morning at 10.00am. There will be an interview with Dorothy Cummings McLean who writes (with humour and sanity!) about the single life from a Catholic perspective.

No 'Ghosts' in Michaela's Story

The bloggers over at Get Religion often talk about 'ghosts' - religious aspects and angles to media stories which are overlooked.  I think it's worth noting that the Irish media haven't done badly in reporting the religious 'angle' following the recent death of Michaela McAreavey.
Michaela was the daughter of popular Gaelic Football manager Mickey Harte and newly-wed wife to John McAreavey, Gaelic footballer and nephew to the Bishop of Dromone.  While the couple were on their honeymoon, Micheala was murdered in what seems to be a petty theft gone wrong. Needless to say, the whole country has been shocked by this sudden and brutal event.
It's been notable that the bereaved families and communities have been using the language of faith in their public statements to the media.  It has been notable too that the press haven't shied away from reporting on Michaela's strong Catholic faith and the assistance provided by the Church community at this time.  A good example is this linked article from the Irish Independent.  

Within an hour of Michaela's body being found in Mauritius, news of her death reverberated across sporting and political circles in Ireland, making the news by midday. It wasn't just the shattered promise and optimism of a couple of newly-weds on honeymoon that resonated, or the fact that she was the daughter of the legendary Tyrone football manager, Mickey Harte. She was also a beautiful, fashion-mad young woman, who was also a devout Catholic and a fluent Irish speaker, a pioneer and a huge GAA fan: for many people, she represented a side of Ireland that isn't often so evident these days.
She was Mickey and Marian Harte's only daughter, sandwiched between three brothers, Mark, Michael and Matthew. She was raised in the village of Ballygawley, a close-knit community with an active parish, and educated by the Loreto nuns in Omagh and later completed her teacher training with the order. She taught Irish at St Patrick's Academy in Dungannon at the time of her death.
[snip]

Francis Downey, a childhood friend of John's, summed her up last week: "She should be remembered as the nicest person you could ever meet. She was a loving woman, she loved her family, she loved football, she loved religion. She would have done anything to help anyone."
He said that John was a "lad's lad" until he clapped eyes on Michaela when they were both students at Queen's University Belfast in 2005. She was studying to be a teacher; he was reading business.
She was a devout Catholic: he was nicknamed the Bishop, after his uncle, Bishop John McAreavey. They went out together for three years before they got engaged. He brought her to Paris and proposed. They married two years later, on December 30, in Michaela's local parish, at St Malachy's Church in Ballymacilroy, Co Tyrone.
They were to move into their new house in Banbridge, Co Down. Their friend, Eamonn, told how he had already helped them to move in some of their things before the wedding, and how John was "happy as Larry", fussing about the heating and making sure everything was just so.
The Bishop of Dromore, John McAreavey, who married the couple, said that she was the love of his life, "absolutely and truly".
"He adored her and talked about her with such warmth. He loved everything about her: her faith, her personality, her love for things Gaelic and Irish, her sparkle. I have a sense that a light has gone out with the death of Michaela," he said.
Mickey Harte seemed proof of that when emerged from his home in Ballygawley, flanked by his two sons, to read a statement to the media on Tuesday. He appeared shrunken and pale, his face contorted into bewildered grief, as he spoke of his loss.
"Michaela was a lovely girl, a wonderful daughter, a brilliant sister for these boys and we will always treasure her. She was a beautiful girl. She couldn't be better, couldn't be nicer. God love her, we are so, so sorry.
"We are equally sorry for poor John, her husband, whom she adored. He adored her. They did not get so long to share their lives with each other. It is such a shame. Our hearts are broken."
He pleaded with the media to "lay off" John. "John is out in Mauritius. He is isolated out there. It has been an awful time. Our hearts go out to him and I would ask everyone to please respect his privacy. . . Please lay off. We are speaking on his behalf. We are devastated. Through us, he wants to say to leave him alone. He is in such a lonely place and even his own family members are not out there yet."
But the Catholic community had already rallied its forces, something Michaela, would have no doubt appreciated. Michaela was a former Loreto girl and the order happened to have four Irish nuns stationed in a convent in Mauritius. Sister Noelle Corscadden, with the Loreto Sisters in Rathfarnham, contacted them. So too had parishioners in Ballygawley; one of the nuns, Sister Theresa Clarke, was from originally Tyrone and many local parishioners stayed in touch.
And so first thing Tuesday morning, three Irish nuns left their convent in the central plains of Mauritius and set off for the north-east coast, and Legends Hotel, to offer comfort to Michaela's heart-broken husband. They talked at length and later they brought him to Mass in a nearby parish. They returned over the following days, offering solace and prayers, as family and relatives began to arrive from Ireland. They included his brother, Michaela's brother and his father, who had been holidaying in Thailand with his mother. An Irish priest with the Holy Ghost Fathers in Mauritius stayed by John's side for three days. Even the local parish priest, Fr Jaques Harel, who celebrated a Mass in honour of Michaela at the hotel on Thursday, had trained in Ireland. Michaela was apparently the first tourist to be murdered in Mauritius in living memory. For a small African island dependent on affluent visitors to its luxury spas to shore up its emerging economy, her death was not only a human tragedy but a diplomatic incident that required fast action.

May the Lord grant her eternal rest and support to her grieving family.

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.

I despair, I really do...

... about the inability of the press to accurately report religious matters.
The Daily Telegraph website has the following headline:

The Pope drops Catholic ban on condoms in historic shift

Do I need to say that the headline is totally misleading?
Anyway, the article opens as follows:

After decades of fierce opposition to the use of all contraception, the pontiff will end the Church's absolute ban on the use of condoms.
He will say that it is acceptable to use a prophylactic when the sole intention is to "reduce the risk of infection" from Aids.

So, what did the Pope actually say? The Curt Jester actually quotes chapter and verse from the Pope's interview with Peter Seewald:

From Chapter 11, “The Journeys of a Shepherd,” pages 117-119:

On the occasion of your trip to Africa in March 2009, the Vatican’s policy on AIDs once again became the target of media criticism.Twenty-five percent of all AIDs victims around the world today are treated in Catholic facilities. In some countries, such as Lesotho, for example, the statistic is 40 percent. In Africa you that the Church’s traditional teaching has proven to be the only sure way to stop the spread of HIV. Critics, including critics from the Church’s own ranks, object that it is madness to forbid a high-risk population to use condoms.

The media coverage completely ignored the rest of the trip to Africa on account of a single statement. Someone had asked me why the Catholic Church adopts an unrealistic and ineffective position on AIDs. At that point, I really felt that I was being provoked, because the Church does more than anyone else. And I stand by that claim. Because she is the only institution that assists people up close and concretely, with prevention, education, help, counsel, and accompaniment. And because she is second to none in treating so many AIDs victims, especially children with AIDs.
I had the chance to visit one of these wards and to speak with the patients. That was the real answer: The Church does more than anyone else, because she does not speak from the tribunal of the newspapers, but helps her brothers and sisters where they are actually suffering. In my remarks I was not making a general statement about the condom issue, but merely said, and this is what caused such great offense, that we cannot solve the problem by distributing condoms. Much more needs to be done. We must stand close to the people, we must guide and help them; and we must do this both before and after they contract the disease.
As a matter of fact, you know, people can get condoms when they want them anyway. But this just goes to show that condoms alone do not resolve the question itself. More needs to happen. Meanwhile, the secular realm itself has developed the so-called ABC Theory: Abstinence-Be Faithful-Condom, where the condom is understood only as a last resort, when the other two points fail to work. This means that the sheer fixation on the condom implies a banalization of sexuality, which, after all, is precisely the dangerous source of the attitude of no longer seeing sexuality as the expression of love, but only a sort of drug that people administer to themselves. This is why the fight against the banalization of sexuality is also a part of the struggle to ensure that sexuality is treated as a positive value and to enable it to have a positive effect on the whole of man’s being.
There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.

Are you saying, then, that the Catholic Church is actually not opposed in principle to the use of condoms?

She of course does not regard it as a real or moral solution, but, in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality.

Now, that's quite a lot to read by the standard of today's journalists, but it seems to me that the Pope is stating quite explicitly that condoms are not a moral solution. What's unclear about that?
Yes, the Pope does point out that in certain circumstances the decision to use a condom to prevent a sexual partner from contracting HIV may represent for that person a first step towards a healthier and more moral appreciation of their sexuality and their sexual behaviour. But, what he says is in no way an alteration of the Church's teaching.

(If I might suggest an analogous argument - a promiscuous young man who makes a decision to be faithful to his steady girlfriend may be a first step towards a healthier and more moral sexuality. I think any sensible confessor or moral theologian would see that. HOWEVER, that doesn't mean that extra-marital sexual activity is something good or something to be approved of.)

Also, one would have thought that the Telegraph's Religious Affairs Correspondent would know that Popes aren't in the habit of promulgating major doctrinal rulings in book-length interviews. It's curious how journalists who, presumably don't believe in Papal infallibility, tend to attribute the greatest of weight to the Pope's obiter dicta.

Edited to add:
Of genuine interest are these snippets from the book in question.

For example,

And how does Pope Benedict pray?
As far as the Pope is concerned, he too is a simple beggar before God – even more than all other people. Naturally, I always pray first and foremost to our Lord, with whom I am united simply by old acquaintance, so to speak. But I also invoke the saints. I am friends with Augustine, with Bonaventure, with Thomas Aquinas. One says to such saints: “Help me!” In this sense, I commend myself to the communion of saints. With them, strengthened by them, I then talk with the dear Lord also, begging, for the most part, but also in thanksgiving – or quite simply being joyful. 

 That image of the beggar strikes me as very Augustinian

Keeping an eye on the ACP

Via RTE:

Catholic Church authorities need to distinguish between the paedophile priest and the cleric who committed a minor indiscretion with a teenager 30 or more years ago, according to a spokesman for the new Association of Catholic Priests.
Father Tony Flannery said many priests who attended a meeting in Co Mayo this afternoon sympathised with colleagues who had been excluded from ministry even though their behaviour since the transgression had been blameless.

That's where they're beginning? Some sex offenders need to be treated more leniently than others?

Fr Flannery was speaking to the media after his organisation's first regional meeting, and he decides to go with that line? That is not something that the priests of Ireland need at the moment.

Now, the handling of allegations against priests does need to be scrutinised. As with any system of justice, the rights and reputation of all parties concerned - including the accused - need to be handled carefully. However, I do not think that the best way of addressing that issue is launching a media debate and I do not think that it's a good idea to engage in special pleading for those who might have committed a minor indiscretion with a teenager thirty years ago. That kind of talk seems to downplay the seriousness of sexual expolitation.

To my mind, a different kind of renewal is needed - a spiritual renewal of our clergy and a more impassioned preaching of Christ and His Gospel.

Post scriptum: I wonder how this is going to play out in the media... Fr Flannery has the reputation of a media-darling, so I wouldn't be surprised if this statement were largely overlooked. Were a more theologically conservative priest or, God forbid, a bishop to make such a comment, he'd probably be flayed alive. However, it'll be interesting to see whether tomorrow's newspapers tear into Fr Flannery or give him an easy ride.

RTE & the Boycott

From David Quinn's column in the Irish Independent:

If a single solitary person was to call on people to boycott RTE on a given day of the week in protest against, say, its perceived bias, how do you imagine RTE would react? I'd imagine they'd ignore the call completely and among themselves dismiss the person as a crank.
But when a single solitary person has the Catholic Church in his or her sights, it's a different matter entirely. Then the person gets all the publicity they can handle. This is exactly what happened to Jennifer Sleeman when she called on Catholics to boycott Masses last Sunday in protest against the male-only priesthood.
In the event, the call for the boycott was a total damp squib. There was no measurable effect on Mass attendance and some priests said that, if anything, attendance was up. Nonetheless, RTE covered the event as though it wasn't a total failure.
(snip)
We might ask how would RTE react if on 'Boycott RTE Day', there was no discernible drop in its viewership figures, but nevertheless TV3 went out of its way to give the impression that something of note had really taken place? Without doubt, RTE would see it is a piece of anti-RTE campaigning by TV3.

Tackling Mis-information...

Damien Thompson's latest post points to an article in a secular humanist magazine which debunks some of the outlandish statements made in supposedly respectable newspapers about clerical sex abuse.

Bishop Michael Smith tries to puncture Hans Küng's claim to be the authentic interpreter of the Spirit of Vatican II. (I agree 100% with Bishop Smith, but note that the headline put on this piece makes it seem much more of an ad hominem attack than it really is. Beware the power of the sub-editor! A positive article about what the Pope has to say is spun as a hatchet job!)

Seraphic gives a boozy assessment of Peter Tatchell's programme on Channel 4.

Mackey's Parting Shot...

I've been following the series of five weekly articles in the Irish Times by Professor James Mackey with a certain grim fascination. For a man who once had a reputation as one of the brightest theologians in the Irish Church, it's disturbing to see him slide into a sort of populist anti-clericalism. In today's article he writes:

[I] initially at least, the largest grouping of Catholics is likely to consist of those who remain unconvinced that any substantial reform is necessary; nothing more than a clearance of maverick clerical and religious abusers and dealing with other incidental occurrences of that regrettable ilk.
The welcome and willing leader of this grouping is the current pope, a mere mortal man convinced of his supreme infallible power to dictate what we, all “children of our holy father”, are to believe and practise in life liturgical and moral.

Seriously? That's meant to be the writing of a theology professor... one who, I understand, still claims to be Catholic?
And he goes on to say:

And there will always be a majority who prefer a judgmental God for whom punishment is the primary instrument of love (as the Archbishop of Dublin would put it) to the father of the prophet Jesus. Particularly as this majority sees itself as so especially God’s people, and he their special God, that they have privileged access to the sacramental means for escaping punishment both here and hereafter.

What can one say about about such a crude representation of the doctrine of the atonement? And does he really think that such an idea is held by a majority of practising Catholics?
It seems to me that Professor Mackey has moved from a hatred of the clergy to a contempt for ordinary Catholics.

So, what are Professor Mackey's recommendations for those who want to follow Christ? He concludes on an unlikely note:

There are yet other options for disenfranchised Catholics: decamping to other religions or to none at all; and many take this option.
It is a reasonable option, particularly in the case of Christianity’s two sibling religions, Judaism and Islam.
For Jesus was a prophet in and for Judaism and Muhammad received him as a prophet on a par with himself; and it can be seen and shown that both of these sibling religions retain some features more faithful to the faith of Jesus than are their current Roman Catholic counterparts.
The same can be true in varying degrees for other world religions, and primal religions, and for the personal spiritualities of people disenchanted with organised religion as such. For God has left no one ever without evidence of the utterly gracious and eternal presence; as the Masai woman introduced in earlier instalments quite amply illustrates.

One has to wonder what a 'liberal-minded' critic of the Church and an advocate of women priests is up to when he includes conversion to Islam as a favourable option for those seeking a certain sort of reform within the Church.

A Reason to Read the Irish Times

John Waters writes about the Rimini meeting of Communion & Liberation:

The other day, for example, I went for a second time to experience an exhibition on the life and work of the Irish-American writer Flannery O’Connor. Now there’s “conservatism” for you: a Catholic novelist whose characters seem to have been conceived at the very precipice of human possibility: strange, dark misfits torn between grace and meaninglessness, awaiting that moment of exceptionality when a choice will throw itself before them. Flannery O’Connor once said that if she had not been a Catholic, she would have had “no reason to write, no reason to see, no reason ever to feel horrified or even to enjoy anything”.
Is it possible for those of us who live in the nominally Catholic land from which her ancestors once hastened to gain any insight into such a judgment?

It never fails to astound me how hostile the reader comments are when John Waters dares to say something positive about his faith. Probably the most amusing hostile comment is from a 'Roger Quinlan' who suggests that Flannery O'Connor should widen her horizons. Given that she passed from this life in 1964, I would imagine that her horizons are, God willing, infinitely broad.