Events This Week
- POST CHRISTMAS ACTIVITIES: We gathered on Tuesday night last to snuff out the Christmas season and to re-establish normality. We are very grateful to the many people who volunteered their services for this annual clean-up. Admittedly, these post-Christmas chores are not the most pleasant of tasks. (Those pine needles tend to find their way into the most unlikely places!) However, the real drudgery was disguised (or concealed) through the few glasses of wine and the beautiful meal prepared by a lady who insists on retaining her anonymity. Thanks very much Betty. It was greatly appreciated by all.
- CHRISTMAS CRIBS: You will notice that we left both cribs intact: the traditional 'substantial' one at the altar, and the 'shadow crib' in the gallery over St. Jude's chapel. Thanks to Larry Carter and Willie Andrew for the former, and to Gerry Ferguson and to Bernadette for the latter. Tradition dictates that all cribs should remain in place for a clear eight days after the Epiphany. This should give the Three Wise Men sufficient time to parade their finery!
- DAYLIGHT ROBBERY: Incidentally, we were extremely lucky that the said three gentlemen were not mugged and the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh stolen. Several times during the week I saw characters down on their knees, searching through the straw in the crib with an enthusiasm that I do not normally associate with pious people. When I challenged one of these young fellows, he explained all to me: he had intended to throw a mere €5 into the crib, but in a fit of holy indifference, a €20 note had escaped from his unselfish clutches. His presence in the crib among the shepherds was explained as a simple 'mission of retrieval'! So the practice of leaving money in the crib may be hallowed by time and tradition. But it should really be discouraged since it tends to attract a lot of unsentimental gold-diggers.
AS I WAS SAYING...
In recent weeks, Owen O'Sullivan, an Irish Capuchin priest, created a bit of a stir with an article in the Maynooth journal The Furrow on priesthood, the Church and truth:
"There is much untruth in the Church. There is hypocrisy and humbug at all levels. There is pretended loyalty, outward profession of the official line accompanied by inner denial; there is the corrupting power of fear. Which is better: honest dissent or pretended assent? If change is to come, it will come from the margins. It was the desert, not the temple, that gave us the prophets."
Any individual or organisation that shadow-boxes with the truth will eventually suffer a knock-out blow, according to O'Sullivan. And the Church is reeling today for this very reason. It dodged the truth for so long at so many levels. The higher echelons (like Rome) regard loyalty to the institution as the most treasured of all virtues. And this 'virtue' was most spectacularly embodied in the person of one Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston. Loyalty to the Vatican was the principle that informed his conscience on all matters. It even led to confrontation with his fellow bishops, some of whom he suspected of being less than loyal.
His confrontations with the late Archbishop of Chicago, Joseph Bernardin, were spectacular and public. Bernardin introduced what he called a 'Common Ground' project. It was designed to facilitate open discussion among bishops, theologians, laity and clergy. Just two rules would guide the discussion: (a) everything was on the table; and (b) everyone had equal say. Hence, the 'Common Ground' title.
Law opposed this project tooth and nail. He opposed it because he feared that loyalty to magisterial teaching could be compromised through dialogue. Ironically, it was this uncompromising loyalty that brought about his resignation. That loyalty would not allow him to let the dignity of the Church appear tarnished on his watch. Hence he felt compelled to conceal from public scrutiny the criminal behaviour of some members of his clergy.
But loyalty has many layers, and its tentacles move in many directions. Law was loyal to the Vatican. Of that there can be no doubt. Was the Vatican loyal to Law? Yes, but only so far.......The Vatican's loyalty was conditional. They would remain loyal to him 'for as long as he retains the capacity to lead and to govern', said a Vatican spokesman.
There's the rub, of course: 'for as long as he retains the capacity to lead and to govern'. You can only 'lead and govern' those who remain loyal to you. Fifty-seven priests of the Boston archdiocese had already signed a letter calling for his resignation. His loyalty to Rome had cost him their loyalty. Where human beings are concerned, loyalty is a dangerous game, a real 'house of cards'. As Law learned to his cost, pull out one card and the whole house collapses.
Owen O'Sullivan is right, of course. There is only one entity that merits our unconditional loyalty: the unvarnished truth! Truthfulness is the bedrock of our credibility. And I seem to remember someone assuring us a long time ago that 'The truth will make you free!' We are slow learners! -
-Dick Lyng.A Saint for Our Time.....
Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, Archbishop of
Chicago, died on November 14, 1996. In November 1993, one Steven
Cook, a man whom he had never met, made an allegation that
Bernardin had sexually assaulted him twenty years earlier. On the
last day of February 1994, Cook asked the judge to drop the
charges. He confessed that they were unfounded. Bernardin sought
out his accuser, met up with him, forgave him, and invited his
accuser to join him in celebrating the Eucharist. At the time of
the Cardinal's death, he and his erstwhile accuser were firm
friends. In the extract below, Kevin O'Gorman, SMA reflects on the
significance and the potential of Joseph Bernardin.
"In the crisis of sexual abuse and the climate created around it, the Church needs a patron, a figure to both focus and find strength for the fruits of its faith - humility and hope, sacrifice and service, compassion and forgiveness. The candidacy of Cardinal Joseph Bernardin as next pope was often touted during his lifetime. His combination of old-world sensibility and new-world savvy was considered by many to constitute something coming close to universal appeal and acceptance. Hence the story of the last years of his life, particularly his humiliation and suffering, show that walking the way of the Cross is the ultimate witness to Christ in the Church. The grace given to Bernardin, in his final years at the end of the twentieth century, in the crisis of sexual abuse that concerned him personally, and his campaign for the so-called 'Common Ground' was to be 'compassionate at the heart of the Church'. The Cross as the Tree of Life, and compassion as its fruit in this world is both the message of his ministry and the means for ultimately breaking the cycle and culture of abuse in all or any of its forms.
Joe O'Halloran, RIP
Mary, Vincent, Gerard and Denis thanks family,
friends, neighbours and our friends in the Augustinian for all the
prayers, letters, Mass and sympathy cards, received during Joe's
illness and after his death, RIP.
"Give thanks to the Lord; for he is good, because his mercy endureth forever."
(Psalm 118.1)
"Quote, Unquote........ "
- "In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed - they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce....? The cuckoo clock." -Orson Welles.
- "Suspicion among thoughts are like bats among birds, they ever fly by twilight." -Francis Bacon.
- "What we call social virtues, good fellowship, is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter, which lie closer together to keep each other warm. It brings people together in crowds and mobs in bar-rooms and elsewhere, but it does not deserve the name of virtue." -Henry David Thoreau.
- "The amount of sleep required by the average person is about five minutes more." -Max Kauffmann.
- "Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind." -Albert Einstein.
- "Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving cabs or cutting hair." -George Burns.
- "Much benevolence of the passive order may be traced to a disinclination to inflict pain upon oneself." -George Meredith.
- "He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it." -Martin Luther King.