November 2011

Our principal theme for November is ‘The Apostolic Mission’ and it is addressed directly by two of this issue’s articles: Ten keys for communicating faith by Juan Manuel Mora and How to be a Catholic woman on campus by Ashley Crouch. The same theme also pops up elsewhere in some of the other articles this month.

Juan Manuel Mora led the response of the Information Office of the Opus Dei Prelature to the rather twisted portrayal of Opus Dei in the Hollywood film The Da Vinci Code; faced with such a daunting task his motto was ‘to make lemonade from lemons’, in other words not to react with the expected outrage and even bitterness, but with equanimity and sweetness. Well, his efforts were by all accounts an astounding success; and here he shares what is undoubtedly largely the fruit of that experience: ten ‘keys’ or rules to guide the Christian in his or her task of evangelising the modern world. The touchstone is positivity: ‘The Christian message has to be transmitted as it is: a huge ‘Yes!’ to men, to women, to life, freedom, peace, development, solidarity, the virtues….’ and to reinforce this he quotes some words of Joseph Ratzinger: ‘The force that carries the truth to others must be the joy that is its clearest expression. Christians should stake everything on truth, and it should be passed on to the world with joy.’
This message is pressing, for Christians ‘under siege’ (as we are to some degree in this erstwhile Island of Saints and Scholars) may react, if they react at all, with a joyless bitterness and so quickly find themselves posted in the ‘reactionary’ pigeonhole. That approach virtually guaranteed to make no impact on society. Quite interestingly Joseph Ratzinger characterises the problem here as a problem of paradigms: the ‘masculine paradigm’ seeks instant results, and when the results don’t show up, one easily slips into bitter discouragement. What is needed is more of the ‘feminine paradigm’ which knows how to wait patiently for results. And who better embodies this paradigm than Pope Benedict himself in his work of reforming the Church? His patience has been particularly noticeable in his painstaking but fruitful work in repairing the terrible damage inflicted on the liturgy since Vatican Council II (more of which hopefully in our December issue).
Ashley Crouch’s piece should, I hope, encourage college students, women in particular, to support one another in the faith, and to join – or form if they don’t already exist – groups that will provide a forum for mutual support. She writes of her own experiences in her college days when she found herself sucked into that lifestyle which  amounts to nothing short of abuse of women. It was the encouragement of college friends which got her out of this three year cul-de-sac in her life:
Looking back, I can see that it was due to the hopeful words and reassurances of friends who cared for me that I decided to take some time off from dating and grow deeper in my relationship with God
This positive and daring apostolate was a hallmark of St Cyril of Alexandria, this month’s Father of the Church, who was, in the words of Pope Benedict, ‘an unflagging, staunch witness of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word of God, emphasizing above all his unity’.
Also Michael Kirke in his In Passing column, reflects on a thought-provoking academic paper which examined the question of how Christian writers might deal with – but don’t often do – issues in everyday life; have not Christians more light to throw onto the hidden greatness of everyday life than anyone else? Modernity is waiting for a new Dante.♦

October 2011

A storm in Cuatro Vientos
Somos la juventud del Papa!’ ‘We are the youth of the Pope!’ It is quite an experience to find oneself in a sea of two million young people from all over the globe, radiating cheerfulness and enthusiasm, chanting this slogan in a raging gale. That was my position on a Saturday evening last August in the, as it turned out, aptly named ‘Cuatro Vientos’ (Four Winds) aerodrome in Madrid. This was the gale which had brought the Pope’s address for the vigil before the World Youth Day Mass to a sudden halt: the Holy Father’s zuchetta had blown off and he had disappeared behind three big white umbrellas, clutched perilously against the driving rain by attendant monsignori. After an initial moment of perplexity on the part of all of us there, spontaneously thousands upon thousands of the young people began chanting the slogan of the WYD event amid much laughter: ‘¡Somos la juventud del Papa! ¡Somos la juventud del Papa!’ I realised there and then that I was seeing an extraordinary snapshot of the Catholic Church in this joyful defiance in the face of such a gale. Suddenly the woes back home in Ireland didn’t seem to be such a big deal after all: what was a bit of a storm in comparison with the resilience and perennial youthfulness of the Church? What was a silly gale in the face of such a Church? Granted it is a rare privilege and a grace to be able to get to the WYD (especially when one no longer qualifies on account of age) – the experience made me think that perhaps here in Ireland we give too much importance to all that huffing and puffing against the Church. That WYD laughter in the face of the Castillian gale reminded me of God’s own laughter in the second psalm in the face of the ‘impotent muttering of the peoples’ and the plotting of kings. Perhaps we need to take the lines of another psalm on board also: ‘Do not get heated about the wicked or envy those who do wrong. Quick as the grass they wither, fading like the green of the fields’ (Ps. 36 (37): 1-2). And really such has always been a feature of our Faith embodied most strikingly in those martyrs such as St Laurence deacon and St Thomas More who went to their deaths cracking jokes.

Committed Christians
Besides, and perhaps more importantly, if we get so ‘heated about the wicked’ then we’re probably missing the true source of the problem. In an interview following the Pope’s recent visit to Germany, Peter Seewald, author of several interviews with Joseph Ratzinger, was asked whom the Pope was referring to when he said during the Freiburg im Breisgau vigil with young people, ‘(D)amage to the Church comes not from her opponents but from uncommitted Christians.’ Seewald replied, ‘Probably you and me.’ This is very salutary. Seewald added, ‘The Pope is an encourager and a builder of bridges, but he also warns us. Every Christian needs new impulses to keep from becoming stagnant in his development, in his journey, his witness and his Christian conduct.’ Already in his Pastoral Letter to Ireland, Pope Benedict outlined a clear programme for rekindling a weakened life of faith on this island: fasting, prayer, reading of Sacred Scripture, the Sacrament of Reconciliation, Eucharistic adoration, retreats….
What is really needed on this island is more of that Cuatro Vientos spirit, what the journalist John Allen has identified as a strong ‘bottom-up’ force which he terms ‘Evangelical (rather than ‘Conservative’) Catholicism’. He defines Evangelical Catholicism in terms of three pillars:
A strong defence of traditional Catholic identity, meaning attachment to classic markers of Catholic thought (doctrinal orthodoxy) and Catholic practice (liturgical tradition, devotional life, and authority).
Robust public proclamation of Catholic teaching, with the accent on Catholicism’s mission ad extra, transforming the culture in light of the Gospel, rather than ad intra, on internal church reform.
Faith seen as a matter of personal choice rather than cultural inheritance, which among other things implies that in a highly secular culture, Catholic identity can never be taken for granted. It always has to be proven, defended, and made manifest.
There are already some small signs that the Evangelical Catholicism has already hit these shores, quietly proclaiming in unison with the youth of Cuatro Vientos: ‘We are the youth of the Church.’♦

August 2011

The Taoiseach’s Speech

Introduction

The Irish Catholic probably captured the national mood when it says in this week’s editorial that: ‘The Taoiseach’s speech, while unfair in some of the detail, was an emotional roar from much of Catholic Ireland to the Vatican for action now.’ There is little interest in the details: people are outraged that once again it is shown how the Catholic Church abused the authority ceded to them by the Irish, even cravenly, it in a bygone, clerical age.

The fine details are of no importance, for now a deep, emotional prejudice against the Catholic Church has taken root, and prejudice is impervious to rational discussion. Despite this disinterest in details, justice requires us to examine the ‘detail’ of the wrong-doing of which the Vatican stands accused. The Vatican itself has signaled ‘a certain note of surprise and regret regarding some excessive reactions’ by recalling Ireland’s Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, and reassigning him to the Czech Republic.

An objective examination of the claim made against the Vatican suggests to me at least that the Vatican has simply no case to answer. In this article I will look at the claim that a 1996 Vatican letter to Irish bishops concerning mandatory reporting constitutes an unwarranted interference in State affairs; I will look at what the original 1996 document says about mandatory reporting and why it makes no sense to say that the Vatican ‘intervention’ is anything other than a legitimate act of guidance. We will look at also how the Vatican ‘line’ on abusing clerics became much more hard line after Joseph Ratzinger managed to take control of the situation in 2001. My conclusion is that quite simply there is no case that can be made against the Vatican.

The claim made against the Vatican

Ireland’s Taoiseach made serious claims against the integrity of the Vatican in a speech to the Dáil concerning the ‘Cloyne Report’: a report by the commission established to investigate the handling by Church and State authorities of allegations of child sexual abuse against clerics of the Cloyne diocese. This is the third such report: in May 2009 the Ryan Report examined Industrial Schools controlled by religious orders, and several months later the Murphy Report examined sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic archdiocese of Dublin. The core of the claim made against is that the Vatican has sought to intervene in internal matters of Irish civil law:

The ‘[Cloyne] report into child sexual-abuse exposes an attempt by the Holy See, to frustrate an Inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic … as little as three years ago, not three decades ago. And in doing so, the Cloyne Report excavates the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism … the narcissism … that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day. The rape and torture of children were downplayed or ‘managed’ to uphold instead, the primacy of the institution, its power, standing and ‘reputation’.

It would appear that the Vatican attempt ‘to frustrate an Inquiry … as little as three years ago’ could only refer to a 1997 letter from the Vatican responding to the Irish Episcopal Conference guidelines on child sexual abuse (which we will deal with in a moment). The Cloyne Report does not refer (as far as I can garner) to any other Vatican ‘interference’, let alone as recent as three years ago. The Cloyne Report refers several times to this 1997 Vatican letter, though never refers to it as ‘interference’. So then, what precisely did this action by the Vatican entail and in what way could it be construed as ‘interference’? To understand that question we must first look at the Irish Episcopal Conference guidelines of 1996.

Irish Episcopal Conference 1996 guidelines

In early 1996 the Irish bishops drew up a document of guidelines for dealing with suspected child abuse cases; the document is generally referred to as the ‘Framework Document’ in the Cloyne Report. It was drawn up in response to some very high profile child abuse cases involving Catholic clergy, most notably that of the Brendan Smyth who in June 1994 was sentenced to prison for such abuse. Amongst other things this document recommended that all suspected child abuse be reported to the civil authorities in Ireland: ‘In all instances where it is known or suspected that a child has been, or is being, sexually abused by a priest or religious the matter should be reported to the civil authorities’ (Framework Document 2.2.1).

As the Cloyne Report acknowledged, these guidelines ‘were far more stringent that those adopted by the State in that they required that all allegations against priests operating in a diocese be reported to the health authorities as well as to the gardaí [6.36].” Incidentally, the Report says that the State’s guidelines are ‘less precise and more difficult to implement’ (1.15).

The Framework Document in ‘mandating’ the reporting of suspecting abuse was more stringent than that of the State which did not (and still does not) have mandatory reporting. Northern Ireland on the other hand has had mandatory reporting of arrestable offences since 1967. The divergence in the civil law within the two jurisdictions covered by the Irish Episcopal Conference has apparently complicated the possibility of such guidelines being treated as anything other than a ‘study document’ by the Vatican.

Legislating for the mandatory reporting of child abuse was first mooted in Ireland when the Kilkenny Incest Inquiry was published in 1993, followed by the review of the death of Kelly Fitzgerald in 1996. Both of these reports recommended mandatory reporting. At that time, the Fine Gael-led coalition government, with Austin Currie as minister for children, explored the feasibility and potential consequences of introducing it. Following a widespread consultation process, it decided against legislation and instead introduced some system reforms. In the subsequent lead-up to the 1997 election, Fianna Fáil promised to introduce mandatory reporting if elected. However, on entering government, minister for children Frank Fahey gave the matter further consideration and decided against it. The issue arose again following the publication of the Ryan Report in 2009, but was put aside when then minister Barry Andrews became aware of evidence of its negative impact in other jurisdictions.

The 1997 letter from the Vatican

In January 1997, the then Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Luciano Storero wrote a confidential letter to the Irish bishops on behalf of the Congregation for the Clergy making two objections to their Framework Document: firstly it contained ‘procedures and dispositions which appear contrary to canonical discipline and which, if applied, could invalidate the acts of the same Bishops who are attempting to put a stop to these problems’ (i.e. could defeat the purpose of the whole exercise) and secondly it expressed ‘serious reservations of both a moral and a canonical nature’ regarding ‘mandatory reporting’.

While the Congregation for the Clergy, under the then Prefect Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos (1996-2006) was clearly unhappy with the Framework Document for its hard-line approach in ‘mandating’ reporting there is, as the Pope’s spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi pointed out in his statement reacting to the Kenny speech, ‘absolutely nothing in the [1997] letter that is an invitation to disregard the laws of the country’. Furthermore, two years later in December 1998, Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos, in a meeting with the Irish bishops in Sligo, stated: ‘The Church, especially through its Pastors, should not in any way put an obstacle in the legitimate path of civil justice … while, at the same time she should move forward with her own canonical procedures.’

The Cloyne Report says of this intervention that it ‘was entirely unhelpful to any bishop who wanted to implement the agreed procedures … [and] effectively gave individual Irish bishops the freedom to ignore the procedures which they had agreed’ (1.18); ‘greatly strengthened the position of those in the Church in Ireland who did not approve of the Framework Document as it effectively cautioned them against its implementation’ (4.22); and ‘gave comfort to those, including Monsignor O’Callaghan, who fundamentally disagreed with the policies in the document [the Episcopal Conference guidelines]’ (4.91).

Many of the Irish bishops were extremely upset at the line being adopted by Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos and they made their objections very clear in later meetings. At a 1998 meeting with him, the then archbishop of Dublin Desmond Connell thumped a table in frustration at the casual approach being adopted by the Congregation for the Clergy. But of course as the Cloyne Report points out, certain bishops felt justified in following the more lenient line adopted by the Congregation rather than that of the ‘Framework Document’. Bishop Magee of Cloyne was one such bishop. During his tenure, between 1996 to 2008, only six of fifteen reportable complaints of abuse were in fact reported to gardaí by the diocese.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith line

Abuse cases by priests are also dealt with by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) and even as early as 1988 its then head, Cardinal Ratzinger, was pressing for a more rigorous approach to abuse cases than was the approach of the Congregation for the Clergy, saying ‘that the normal process for dealing with such priests – which typically involved a request for dispensation from priestly obligations – took too long and was seen more as a favour than a punishment.’ In 2001 the CDF was given exclusive jurisdiction over a number of the ‘most grave crimes’ including the sexual abuse of a minor by a priest and in the same year the CDF issued norms (contained in the document Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela) for the whole Church worldwide dealing with sexual abuse cases. One of these stated expressly: ‘Civil law concerning reporting of crimes to the appropriate authorities should always be followed.’ In 2003, Cardinal Ratzinger obtained from Pope John Paul II new faculties to deal with sex abuse offenders, including those making it easier to dismiss them from the priesthood.

All this has meant that since 2001 the Vatican stance regarding the sexual abuse of minors by priests has been much tougher. Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has said that he personally delivered over 70,000 documents to the previous Murphy Commission of Inquiry and reported every case of abuse allegations to the gardaí, and was ‘never been reprimanded by the Vatican for doing that, so the norms that are there are important’.

In his meeting with the Irish bishops in March 2011, Pope Benedict XVI reiterated the need for them to cooperate with civil authorities: ‘Besides fully implementing the norms of canon law in addressing cases of child abuse, continue to cooperate with civil authorities in their area of competence.’

From the Cloyne Report it is clear that not only did the diocese not cooperate with civil authorities, but neither did it ‘carry out proper canonical investigations. A canonical investigation under canon 1717 was ordered by Bishop Magee in the cases of five of the fifteen diocesan priests against whom allegations were made or concerns expressed. Such an investigation should also have been ordered in at least four other cases’ (1.49). Bishop Magee admits that he didn’t always follow the norms laid down by the CDF itself, that there was a case he ‘should have’ informed the CDF of but never did (9.78). Rather than there being a Vatican attempt to ‘frustrate’ child protection, the Cloyne Report makes clear that at least part of the problem in Cloyne was that the ‘Vatican line’ (CDF guidelines and Canon Law) was not being followed by diocesan officials.

The ‘standards of conduct’ comment

Taoiseach Enda Kenny finished his speech to the Dáil with a quote from the then Cardinal Josef Ratzinger which appears to impugn Pope Benedict’s regard for civil law and child protection:

Cardinal Josef Ratzinger said ‘Standards of conduct appropriate to civil society or the workings of a democracy cannot be purely and simply applied to the Church.’ As the Holy See prepares its considered response to the Cloyne Report, as Taoiseach, I am making it absolutely clear, that when it comes to the protection of the children of this State, the standards of conduct which the Church deems appropriate to itself, cannot and will not, be applied to the workings of democracy and civil society in this republic. Not purely, or simply or otherwise.

The quote is taken out of context. It comes from a 1990 document entitled Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian. The quotation simply refers to the fact that the relationship of a theologian to revealed truth is different from that of an opinion-maker in a modern democracy: tactics that the latter may legitimately use to promote his opinion are not open to the theologian in seeking the truth. Using this phrase to suggest that the author holds that lower standards of child protection are to apply in the Church is not completely fair.

Conclusion

Pope Benedict in an interview recounted how Archbishop Diarmuid Martin told him that from the 1960s on the prevailing mentality was that ‘the Church must not be a Church of laws but, rather of love: she must not punish.’ This in the words of the Pope ‘led to an odd darkening of the mind, even in very good people.’ I think that this gets to the core of the problem with regard to the failure to cooperate with the law – whether civil or canon – in the diocese of Cloyne and elsewhere in the Church. Nevertheless, the Taoiseach’s allegation of Vatican interference in internal State affairs does not appear to be borne out by the Cloyne Report itself. This speech, combined with the recent declaration to the effect that the seal of the confessional will soon no longer be respected by Irish law, suggests a worrying trend in Irish politics.♦

June/July 2011

As I write this piece, here in the centre of Dublin, festive crowds are returning home after being addressed by President Barack Obama during an open air concert nearby. While his whistle-stop visit has been a great event for the country, it looks more like show biz when compared with the visit of Queen Elizabeth II earlier some days earlier. Her visit was undeniably something special. Perhaps in future years it will be seen as one of the defining moments in Anglo-Irish relations, and I couldn’t help but feel that there was something inescapably Christian underlying the whole event, characterised as it was by gestures of respect for, and clear words of kindness towards, an erstwhile estranged tradition. This made me think of the Christian roots of our nearest neighbour, and the great good that her return to the Catholic Faith must inevitably someday bring at least to the English speaking world. For this reason I have reviewed a book which is tantalisingly titled: The Realm: An Unfashionable Essay on the Conversion of England.

Saint Gregory of Nyssa continues to be ‘the Father of the Church of the month’ as we feature the second of Pope Benedict XVI’s two papal addresses on this great fourth century mystic. And since the feast of Pentecost is coming up, we have selected an excerpt from St Gregory dealing with the Holy Spirit. Our next piece, from Patrick Gorevan, is also relevant to the liturgy of June: it is an interesting analysis of St Thomas Aquinas’ short Eucharistic hymn O sacrum convivium. And since summer holidays are in the offing for most of us (at least in the northern hemisphere), Ciarán Clarke offers us an interesting consideration on the usefulness (or uselessness?) of leisure. We might all tend to think that we know how to rest, or even believe that we would be great practitioners of leisure if we only had the time. However, it may be that in reality we could do with a little tutoring in this crucial art. Reading Ciarán’s piece reminded me of St Josemaría Escrivá’s definition of rest: ‘Rest means recuperation: to gain strength, form ideals and make plans. In other words it means a change of occupation, so that you can come back later with a new impetus to your daily job’ (Furrow, no. 514).’ In his monthly In Passing column, Michael Kirke casts a wary eye on an upcoming offering from Hollywood: Atlas Shrugged, adapted from an Ayn Rand novel of the same name. Rand may not be – thankfully – a household name, but she is essentially a mid-twentieth century writer of the ‘religion-isall- bumpkin’ variety. Are we all that surprised her novels are now being made into films? Perhaps Ayn Rand mellowed with age – this certainly is one of the benefits of growing older according to Michael DeArce, in his piece where he looks at how we grow more vulnerable with age. This is not as bad as it sounds, and in fact when seen through Christian eyes, even gives us a glimpse of immortality. Rev. Eugene O’Neill helps us prepare for the solemnity of the birth of St John the Baptist, which falls on June 24. St John the Baptist is a timely saint, given the courage with which he spoke of God, and God’s law. He was, as Fr Eugene says, a man of his convictions. And in lieu of the regular piece from Rev. Patrick Gorevan on the upcoming changes to the English Missal, we have included a précis of a very brilliant address by the US prelate, Bishop James Conley on the topic. There is a lot of food for thought here.♦

May 2011

April ended with a royal wedding and May began with a papal beatification. Both joyful events attracted huge crowds in London and Rome respectively. While the viewership of the wedding is reported to have been somewhere between one and two billion and we might have to admit probably overshadowed the beatification. Although the wedding may have stolen the show (and only the British Royal family could steal a march on the Vatican for pomp and circumstance) it was tinged with a note of trepidation: ‘Might this marriage go the way of that of the groom’s own parents?’ was the unspoken question. The Anglican Bishop of London, Dr Richard Chartres, in his wedding homily, averted to the struggle that each and every newlywed couple must undertake: ‘It is of course very hard to wean ourselves away from self-centredness…’. He began his homily by quoting St Catherine of Siena (on her feast-day): ‘Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.’ Let us hope that this couple who will inevitably exert such an influence on many young people will be precisely that: the people God has meant them to be.
John Paul II certainly was the man God meant him to be and as a consequence set the world on fire. As Pope Benedict put it in his beatification homily: ‘society, culture, political and economic systems he opened up to Christ, turning back with the strength of a titan – a strength which came to him from God – a tide which appeared irreversible.’ He gave a world that had largely lost hope ‘the strength to believe in Christ’ and ‘rightly reclaimed for Christianity that impulse of hope which had in some sense faltered before Marxism and the ideology of progress.’
This is what makes the beatification an event of untinged joy, there being (almost) no trepidation: John Paul II faithfully followed God’s plan for his life and the Church now decrees that he may be venerated. There is almost no trepidation because the general opinion of theologians is that whereas canonisation infallibly proclaims a person to be in heaven – and therefore must be venerated by the faithful – beatification does not enjoy the same infallibility and merely states that the faithful are permitted to venerate the person in question. That said, we all of course very happily join Pope Benedict in directing our prayers to Blessed John Paul II and look forward to his canonisation!:
Blessed are you, beloved Pope John Paul II, because you believed! Continue, we implore you, to sustain from heaven the faith of God’s people. You often blessed us in this Square from the Apostolic Palace: Bless us, Holy Father! Amen.
Given the royal wedding it is probably fitting that we feature an article on cohabitation in this month’s issue of Position Papers. It is striking how drab and stale cohabitation looks when contrasted with the delight of a wedding, especially one with elements of a fairy-tale about it. The unspoken consensus of all – or at least of the cheering London crowds – is that there is a world of a difference between a cohabiting and a married couple. For this reason, Dr Chartres was right to point out in his wedding homily that there is something truly regal about every marrying couple: ‘In a sense every wedding is a royal wedding with the bride and the groom as king and queen of creation, making a new life together so that life can flow through them into the future.’♦

April 2011

John Paul II steals the show in this month’s edition of Position Papers. We’re preparing ourselves for what promises to be the event of the year: his beatification on May 1 in Rome. The first of our John Paul II pieces focuses on that week at the end of September 1979 which  – if you are Irish and over forty or so – is an intrinsic part of our memory of that Pope ‘from a far country’. Who, having been part of the event in the Phoenix Park for instance, could forget the moment on that chilly, blue-skied morning when the Pope’s plane flew over the crowd, creating a sense of such euphoria among the million and a quarter men, women and children gathered there? Catherine Kavanagh revisits his message to the Irish people delivered during that visit and shows how prophetic his often quite sombre warnings were. While the Pope clearly relished his days in Ireland – apparently he later drew consolation from watching footage from his Galway meeting with the young people of Ireland from time to time – he was not oblivious to the grave dangers threatening, and even already present within, Irish society. It would seem that we were the ones who were blissfully unaware of what was afoot. I couldn’t help wondering as I read Catherine’s piece why we didn’t pay more attention to the substance of the Papal Visit; had we done so Irish society – not just the Church in Ireland – might have saved itself a lot of the agony it has experienced over the past decade.

I deliberately say that society here, and not just the Church, has suffered as a result of our failure to heed his warning: the Pope wasn’t just pointing to clouds on the ecclesiastical horizon but to ones looming over the very soul of Ireland itself. He wasn’t one to look at the Church as an institution whose fortunes could be somehow separated off from the lives of a people. His view of the Church was closer to that of the unknown author of the second century Epistle to Diognetus who wrote: ‘What the soul is to the body, Christians are to the world.’ I was reminded of this by an astute observation made by John Waters in a recent article in the Irish Catholic:

The crisis confronting the Church, in other words, is the same as the crisis facing Irish society. It is not a ‘religious’ crisis, but a human one. The solution for the Church is therefore the same as the solution for Irish society: the rephrasing of the core questions and ineluctable realities of existence.

Our second piece on John Paul II relates to an event still very fresh in the memories of young and old alike: the death of the Pope on the eve of Divine Mercy Sunday, 2005. Fr Eugene O’Neill’s homily given the next day certainly re-enkindles the bitter-sweet feelings of the days surrounding John Paul II’s death and funeral: we felt orphaned to lose such a father and yet were certain that he had indeed gone to ‘the house of the Father’. I’m sure we all remember that most poignant of moments during the funeral homily delivered by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger when he conjured up for us the image of Karol Wojtyla once more extending his blessing to us, no longer from the window of the Papal apartments, but now from heaven itself:

None of us can ever forget how in that last Easter Sunday of his life, the Holy Father, marked by suffering, came once more to the window of the Apostolic Palace and one last time gave his blessing urbi et orbi. We can be sure that our beloved Pope is standing today at the window of the Father’s house, that he sees us and blesses us. Yes, bless us, Holy Father. We entrust your dear soul to the Mother of God, your Mother, who guided you each day and who will guide you now to the eternal glory of her Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.♦

March 2011

By now Archbishop Martin is renowned for his straight talking, and a speech he gave at Magdalene College, Cambridge, on 22 February was no exception. In his blunt analysis of the state of the Church in Ireland, the Archbishop returned to a theme he has addressed before: the ‘non-intellectual streak in the religious culture of Ireland’ as he put it. And from his speech it looks like Pope Benedict shares this concern:

When I was received by the Pope on the occasion of the ad limina visit four years ago, I arrived well prepared with all my statistics and my analysis of the bright spots and the shadows of Catholicism in Dublin. I had statistics about priests, about institutions, about Mass attendance.

After greeting me the Pope started the conversation immediately by asking me: ‘Where are the points of contact between the Church in Ireland and those areas where the future of Irish culture is being formed?’ Instead of asking me about the number of parishes, he quizzed me about the relationship between faith and universities, and media, as well as literature and the arts and the fundamental ethical issues on economy and society.

This reminds me of a question someone recently put to me; how was it, he asked, that our ‘intensely Catholic’ primary and secondary education could produce a society so devoid of ethical principles in the field of economics and politics. I had to agree that there is a terrible mismatch here. This also relates to our lead item for the March Position Papers: Jeffrey Egan’s piece entitled Work and virtue on the Irish economic crisis and the place (or absence) of virtue.  This was the theme of a very interesting Iona Institute talk given by the British essayist Theodore Dalrymple which took place in Dublin some weeks ago. We have included a short excerpt from an essay he wrote on this matter, in which he speaks of the Irish crisis as belonging to a deeper ‘existential crisis’ affecting the West at large.

The Archbishop’s concern that Irish Catholics have identified the Faith excessively with ‘priests, institutions, and Mass attendance’ and too little with the intellectual and cultural life of a nation is well placed. We probably don’t appreciate how much our current malaise is due to this imbalance. As the Archbishop put it:

Since the failure of Newman’s Catholic University project in Ireland the Irish Church has not really found the right path of a balanced Catholic presence in Irish culture. In the past Catholicism dominated. There was no perceived need to have focused understanding of the role of being Catholic as such in intellectual and cultural life.

The result is that today Catholic culture in Ireland does not have the prominence or the intellectual leadership that it should have. While still a predominantly a Catholic country, Ireland does not produce a proportionate level of theological research. There are few forums for reflection on the relationship between faith and life. The intellectual level of preparation of future priests is very mixed.

Another very interesting observation in the speech was that ‘So much coverage in the Catholic and in the mainstream secular media is only around controversy.’ There certainly is a great danger, especially for younger people, that the Church would never appear as other than either embroiled in scandals of our own making, or else in noisey combat with secularism. While it is manifestly true that we have to put right the scandals in the Church, and oppose the effects of secularism tirelessly, to reduce the Church to these tasks is to leave so many people without cognisance of the Church that produced Dante and Bernini, Thomas Aquinas and Edith Stein, Thomas More and John Henry Newman. I would like to think that Position Papers bucks the trend in providing one of these few ‘forums for reflection on the relationship between faith and life’.♦

February 2011

Marriage – our ‘cover story’

One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.’ Well, with apologies to Oscar Wilde, our ‘cover story’ for the month containing St Valentine’s Day is all about what should be the most romantic of loves: the love between a husband and wife. The first of our three articles dedicated to marriage is from a new name to Position Papers: Siobhan Scullion, and she is considering the special fruit of married love, namely babies, and the subtely unenthusiastic attitude to them that she has noticed now that she has her first. Our second article is one I have been meaning to publish here for quite a while but have left it languish in the hard disk of my computer. It is from the Spanish father of seven children – for that reason alone he should be a bit of an expert on family matters – who heads up a Spanish institute for promotion of family values (Institute of Advanced Family Studies) and has at least one book on the family: Despues De Amar Te Amare (After Loving, I Will Love You). With his kind permission I have reprinted it here. It is a very practical article, written to help spouses move up the ‘levels’ of married love and to avoid the ‘snakes and ladders’ type pitfalls which can bring a couple sliding down to where they began. The last of the trio of marriage articles is from Rev. Donncha OhAodha who unpacks some of the rich theology of marriage to be found in just one of the texts from the Marriage Rite. It brings home just what a magnificent sacrament marriage is. At the same time these three articles leave me thinking with regret of what all those cohabiting couples are missing. It is certainly a shame that cohabitation – at least in Ireland where even by 2006 twice as many 25 year-olds were cohabiting as were married – is so socially acceptable. This is something we will come back to in a later issue.

Regular items

We begin as have been doing, with an excerpt from one of the Fathers of the Church and the corresponding Audience from Pope Benedict’s masterly catechetical series. As the Pope points out, these great Church Fathers are still relevant now even though they lived and wrote so long ago. Take St Basil’s admonition that in times of famine and disaster (think global recession), Christians should ‘not to be more cruel than beasts … by taking over what people possess in common or by grabbing what belongs to all’. In his In Passing column, Michael Kirke puts right the very mistaken reading of the Psalms as portraying anything but a loving Father God. And in our reviews Ronan Wright looks at the film The King’s Speech which, it has just been announced, has been presented with the top award at this year’s Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards; Colin Firth won best actor for his portrayal of King George VI. Another new name to Position Papers, Kenneth Collins, reviews John Waters’ provocatively titled book, Feckers; by all accounts a searing analysis of the state of Irish society.

Tweaking and other changes

As you may have noticed, we have been tweaking the format of Position Papers. We hope you like the changes. Furthermore, our team of technicians has been working day and night to re-establish the Position Papers website (at www.positionpapers.ie). Please visit the site and see what you think. It is still in its infancy so your feedback would be very welcome. There is a comment box in which you can leave words of glowing praise and adulation or – if you must – criticisms. In fact you can use the comment box to give us your feedback on the articles (and editorials) that we publish. We hope in time to include back issues of Position Papers on the website – so tell your friends!♦

January 2011

Just before going to print this month we heard the wonderful news that Pope John Paul II is to be beatified – on ‘his’ Sunday: Divine Mercy Sunday (May 1), by one of his closest collaborators: Joseph Ratzinger. One of the great advantages of the speedier beatification process is that increasingly the new beati will still be fresh in our memories when the time comes for their elevation to the altars  – as is very much the case here. The prefect of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes, Cardinal Angelo Amato, commented on what he saw as two essential attitudes embodied in John Paul II: ‘The first is great faith in the presence of God in history, because the Incarnation is important, effective and conquers evil: the grace of the Eucharistic presence of the Lord overcomes all the barriers and anti-human regimes.’ He recalled how the Polish Pope had to live through Nazi and Communist regimes, seeing the implosion and destruction of both. ‘The second attitude is his great missionary spirit.’
We continue our series dealing with the Father of the Church ‘of the month’ as it were; giving an excerpt from his writings, and the relevant Address on the Fathers from Pope Benedict.  This month it is the turn of St Basil the Great – an effective witness to that which all the great pastors of the Church have born witness: the divine love of which we have all received a spark. The new philosopher beatus would approve of our two articles dealing with great contemporary philosophers: Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor. MacIntyre shows us very convincingly that our economic crisis cannot be solved by economics, but only by a return to virtue. Taylor is one of the world’s leading analysts of the slide of the West into secularism from the Enlightenment onwards. His answer is closely linked to that of MacIntyre: society has to escape from radical individualism and realise that we are spiritual creatures bound in together in communities.
And there are reasons to hope that the trend towards secularisation is not inexorable; in his regular In Passing column, Michael Kirke discusses a study in the USA which suggests that middle America does hold increasingly more conservative views on marriage and family. Could the same trend develop here in Ireland, he asks. Not impossible when it turns out that the rebel rock ‘n roller Keith Richards now has as the mainstays of his existence the love of his family, the creation of his music, and libraries.
And we’re not finished with philosophers just yet! We have published a short interview from Le Figaro, in which a young French philosopher, Fabrice Hadjadj, suggests that it is part of the very make-up of the Church to move from crisis to crisis. Crises serve the important function of getting us to examine ourselves and avoiding complacency.
We celebrated the feast of the Holy Name on January 3. Michael DeArce explores the mystery of our capacity to name things, and also to receive names ourselves – ultimately from God himself.
Over the summer while on holidays near Barcelona, I was given a remarkable little book by Joaquín Romero Salord in which he tells of his life with Multiple Sclerosis – the ‘uninvited guest’ which came into his life when he was a young sporty man in his twenties. Unfortunately the book is as of yet only available in Spanish, but I came across the English translation of an interview which he gave in a Spanish periodical and have included it in this month’s edition. Romero’s attitude to his illness is certainly a wonderful example of faith and fortitude.
Finally we have review of an inspiring new film, Of Gods and Men, and reviews of two books; firstly, the recent lengthy interview given by Pope Benedict, Light of the World; and secondly, Nuremberg: evil on trial which deals with that terrible regime which unwittingly did a lot to forge two wonderful leaders of the Church: Karol Wojtyla and Joseph Ratzinger.♦